SIA'^ 


Los  Angefes,  Cal 


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THE  MANLINESS  OF  CHRIST. 


THE 


MANLINESS  OF   CHRIST 


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/yc  7 


BT 


THOMAS  HUGHES,  Q.  C, 

AVTHOB  OF  "TOM   BBOWN'S   BOHOOL  DATS,"  00 


FOURTEENTH    EDITION. 


BOSTON: 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY. 

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1^6 


1 


KITEBSIDE,  OAMBRIDOa  : 
atlKBOTTPED    AND    PKINTIS    IT 

a.  0-  HonoHTON  AND  COUP  An. 


30  \ 


NOTE. 


The  greater  part  of  the  following  pages 
appeared  originally  in  "Good  Words,"  and 
are  now  republished  with  the  permission 
of  the  proprietors  of  that  magazine. 

T.  H. 


CONTENTS. 


INTKODUCTORT. 

PA«I 

The  Motive  of  the  Book  .....         .    .        1 

PART  I. 

The  Holy  Land  a.  d.  30  —  The  Battle  Field 
OF  the  Great  Captain 8 

PART  II. 
The  Tests  of  Manliness 17 

PART  HL 
Christ's  Boyhood 85 

PART  IV. 
The  Call  ok  Christ 61 

PART  V. 
Chbist's  Ministry.     Act  L  ........    77 


viii  CONTENTS. 

PART  VL 

PAea 
Chsist's  Ministry.    Act  IL 95 

PART  vn. 

Chbist's  Mikistbt.    Act  UI Il(( 

PART  VIII. 
Thb  Last  Act 126 

Conclusion IS) 


THE    MANLINESS    OF  CHRIST. 


INTRODUCTORY. 
THE  MOTIVE  OF   THE  BOOK. 

Some  time  ago,  when  I  was  considering 
what  method  it  would  be  best  to  adopt  in 
Sunday -afternoon  readings  with  a  small 
class  in  the  Working  Men's  College,  I  re- 
ceived a  communication  which  helped  me 
to  come  to  a  decision.  It  came  in  the  form 
of  a  proposal  for  a  new  association,  to  be 
called  "The  Christian  Guild."  The  pro- 
moters were  persons  living  in  our  north- 
ern towns,  some  of  which  had  lately  gained 
a  bad  reputation  for  savage  assaults  and 
crimes  of  violence.  My  correspondents  be- 
lieved that  some  organized  effort  ought  to 
be  made  to  meet  this  evil,  and  that  there 

was  nothing  in  existence  which  would  serve 
1 


2  THE  MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST. 

their  purpose.  The  Young  Men's  Christian 
Associations  had  increased  of  late,  indeed, 
in  numbers,  but  had  failed  to  reach  the 
class  which  most  needed  Christian  influ- 
ences. There  was  a  wide-spread  feeling, 
they  said,  that  these  associations  —  valu- 
able as  they  allowed  them  to  be  in  many 
ways  —  did  not  cultivate  individual  manli- 
ness in  their  members,  and  that  this  defect 
was  closely  connected  with  their  open  pro- 
fession of  Christianity.  They  had  separ- 
ated their  members  too  much  from  the  ordi- 
nary habits  and  life  of  young  men  ;  and 
bad  set  before  them  a  wrong  standard, 
which  taught,  not  that  they  were  to  live  in 
the  world  and  subdue  it  to  their  Master, 
but  were  to  withdraw  from  it  as  much  as 
possible. 

Therefore  they  would  found  their  new 
•'  Christian  Guild "  on  quite  other  princi- 
ples. They  aimed,  indeed,  at  something 
like  a  revival  of  the  muscular  Christianity 
of  twenty-five  years  ago,  organized  for  mis- 
sionary work  in  the  great  northern  towns. 


INTRODUCTORY.  3 

The  members  of  the  Guild  must  be  first  of 
all  Christians,  but  selected  as  far  as  possi- 
ble for  some  act  of  physical  courage  or 
prowess.  It  was  proposed  that  the  medal 
of  the  Royal  Humane  Society,  or  the  cham- 
pionship of  a  town  or  district  in  running, 
wrestling,  rowing,  or  other  athletic  exer- 
cise, should  qualify  at  once  for  membership. 
These  first  members  were  to  form  the  root, 
as  it  were,  out  of  which  branches  of  the 
Guild  were  to  grow  —  one,  they  hoped,  in 
every  great  centre  of  population.  Each 
branch,  if  properly  supported,  might  attract 
the  most  vigorous  and  energetic  young  men 
of  its  district,  and  so  by  degrees  give  a 
nigher  tone  to  the  sports  and  occupations 
which  absorb  the  spare  time  and  energies 
of  young  Englishmen. 

I  did  not  see  my  way  to  joining  any  such 
movement,  which,  indeed,  never  seemed  at 
all  hopeful  to  me ;  nor  do  I  know  whether 
anything  more  has  been  done  in  the  mat- 
ter. But  the  proposal  set  me  thinking  on 
the  state  of  things  amongst  us  which  the 


4  THE  MANLINESS  OlT  CHRIST. 

Christian  Guild  was  intended  to  meet.  I 
was  obliged  to  admit  that  my  own  experi- 
ence, now  stretching  over  a  quarter  of  a 
century  in  London,  agreed  to  some  extent 
with  that  of  my  northern  correspondents 
Here,  too,  this  same  feeling  exists,  or  it  may 
be  this  same  prejudice,  as  to  "  Young 
Men's  Christian  Associations  "  amongst  the 
class  from  which  their  members  are  for  the 
most  part  taken.  Their  tone  and  influence 
are  said  to  lack  manliness,  and  the  want  of 
manliness  is  attributed  to  their  avowed  pro- 
fession of  Christianity.  If  you  pursue  the 
inquiry,  you  will  often  come  upon  a  distinct 
belief  that  this  weakness  is  inherent  in  our 
English  religion  ;  that  our  Christianity  does 
appeal  and  must  appeal  habitually  and 
mainly  to  men's  fears — to  that  in  them 
which  is  timid  and  shrinking,  rather  than 
to  that  which  is  courageous  and  outspoken. 
This  strange  delusion  is  often  alleged  as 
fche  cause  of  the  want  of  power  and  attrac- 
tion in  these  associations. 

I  do  not  myself  at  all  share  this  opinion 


INTRODUmukY.  5 

as  to  the  Young  Men's  Christian  Associa- 
tions, for,  so  far  as  I  have  had  the  means 
of  judging,  they  seem  to  me,  especially  in 
the  last  few  years,  to  have  been  doing  ex- 
cellent service,  though  they  work  in  a  nar- 
row groove.  But  whether  this  be  so  or 
not  is  a  matter  of  comparative  indiffer- 
ence, and  the  controversy  may  safely  be  left 
to  settle  itself.  But  the  underlying  belief 
in  the  rising  generation  that  Christianity  is 
really  responsible  for  this  supposed  weak- 
ness in  its  disciples,  is  one  which  ought  not 
to  be  so  treated.  The  -conscience  of  every 
man  recognizes  courage  as  the  foundation 
of  manliness,  and  manliness  as  the  perfec- 
tion of  human  character,  and  if  Christian- 
ity runs  counter  to  conscience  in  this  mat- 
ter, or  indeed  in  any  other,  Christianity 
will  go  to  the  wall. 

But  does  it  ?  On  the  contrary,  is  not 
perfection  of  character  —  "  Be  ye  perfect 
lis  your  Father  in  heaven  is  perfect,"  per- 
fection to  be  reached  by  moral  effort  in  the 
faithful    following    of    our   Lord's   Kfe   on 


6  THE  MANLINESS   OF    CHRIST. 

earth  —  the  final  aim  which  the  Christian 
religion  sets  before  individual  men ;  and 
constant  contact  and  conflict  with  evil  of 
all  kinds  the  necessary  condition  of  that 
moral  effort,  and  the  means  adopted  by  our 
Master,  in  the  world  in  which  we  live,  and 
for  which  He  died  ?  In  that  strife,  then, 
the  first  requisite  is  courage  or  manfulness,  * 
gained  through  conflict  with  evil,  —  for 
without  such  conflict  there  can  be  no  per- 
fection of  character,  the  end  for  which 
Christ  says  we  were  sent  into  this  world. 
But  was  Christ's  own  character  perfect  in 
this  respect,  —  not  only  in  charity,  meek- 
ness, purity,  long-suffering,  but  in  courage  ? 
If  not,  can  He  be  anything  more  than  the 
highest  and  best  of  men,  even  if  He  were 
that;  can  He  be  the  Son  of  God  in  any 
sense  except  that  in  which  all  men  are 
esons  ? 

This  was  the  question  which  was  forced 
on  me  at  the  time  by  the  proposals  of  the 
Christian  Guild,  and  it  gave  me  the  hint  I 
was  in  search  of  as  to  the  method  of  oui 


INTRODUCTORY.  7 

Sunday  readings.  We  followed  it  up  as 
well  as  we  could  througli  the  events  re- 
corded in  the  gospels,  applying  the  test  at 
every  stage  of  the  drama.  The  results  are 
collected  in  the  following  papers. 


PART  L 

THE   HOLY   LAND   A.   D.    30  —  THE   BATTLE 
FIELD   OF  THE   GREAT   CAPTABSr. 

"  Phoenicia  and  Palestine  were  sometimes  annexed  to  and 
Bometimes  separated  from  the  jurisdiction  of  Syria.  The  for- 
mer was  a  narrow  and  rocky  coast ;  the  latter  was  a  territory 
scarce!}'  superior  to  Wales  in  fertility  or  extent!  Yet  Phoe- 
nicia and  Palestine  will  ever  live  in  the  memory  of  mankind, 
since  America  as  well  as  Europe  has  received  letters  from  the 
one  and  religion  from  the  other."  — Gibbon,  chap.  i. 

In  order  to  approach  our  subject  with 
any  chance  of  making  the  central  figure 
clear  to  ourselves,  and  getting  out  of  the 
atmosphere  of  unreality  in  which  our  ordi- 
nary religious  training  is  too  apt  to  leave  us, 
we  must  make  an  effort  to  understand  the 
condition  and  the  surroundings  of  life  in 
Palestine  when  our  Lord  appeared  in  it  as  a 
leader  and  teacher. 

Take  first  the  southern  portion,  the  scene 
"jf  the  opening  and  closing  days  of  His  min- 


TEE  HOLT  LAND  A.  D.  30.  9 

istry,  and  of  periodical  visits  during  those 
three  years.  While  He  was  still  a  boy  un- 
der ten  years  of  age  the  Romans  had  de- 
posed Herod  Archelaus,  and  had  annexed 
Judaea,  which  was  from  thenceforth  ruled 
as  a  province  of  the  Empire  by  a  Roman 
procurator.  The  rebellion  of  Judas  of  Ga- 
mala,  which  followed  shortly  afterwards, 
was  a  fierce  protest  of  the  Jews  against  the 
imperial  taxation  and  the  yoke  of  Rome. 
It  was  suppressed  in  the  stern,  Roman  fash- 
ion, and  from  that  time  till  the  commence- 
ment of  Christ's  public  ministry  Jerusalem 
and  the  surrounding  country  were  on  the 
verge  of  revolt,  a  constant  source  of  anxiety 
to  the  Roman  procurators,  and  held  down 
with  difficulty  by  the  heavy  hand  of  the  le- 
gions which  garrisoned  them. 

All  that  was  best  and  worst  in  the  Jew- 
ish character  and  history  combined  to  ren- 
der the  Roman  yoke  intolerably  galling  to 
the  nation.  The  peculiar  position  of  Jeru- 
salem —  a  sort  of  Mecca  to  the  tribes  ac- 
knowledging the  Mosaic  law  —  made  Syria 


10  THE  MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST. 

the  most  dangerous  of  all  the  Roman  prov- 
inces. To  that  city  enormous  crowds  of  pil- 
grims, of  the  most  stiff-necked  and  fanatical 
of  all  races,  flocked  three  times  at  least  in 
every  year,  bringing  with  them  offerings 
and  tribute  for  the  temple  and  its  guar- 
dians, on  a  scale  which  must  have  made  the 
hierarchy  at  Jerusalem  formidable  even  to 
the  world's  master,  by  their  mere  command 
of  wealth. 

But  this  would  be  the  least  of  the  causes 
of  anxiety  to  the  Roman  governor,  as  he 
spent  year  after  year  face  to  face  with  thes^ 
terrible  leaders  of  a  terrible  people. 

These  high  priests  and  rulers  of  the  Jews 
were  indeed  quite  another  kind  of  adver- 
saries from  the  leaders,  secular  or  religious, 
of  any  of  those  conquered  countries  which 
the  Romans  were  wont  to  treat  with  con- 
temptuous toleration.  They  still  represent- 
ed living  traditions  of  the  glory  and  sanc- 
tity of  their  nation,  and  of  Jerusalem,  and 
exercised  still  a  power  over  that  nation 
which  the  most  resolute  and  ruthless  of  Ro- 


THE  HOLY  LAND  A.   D.  30. 


,?.  nfitf.. 


man  procurators  did  not  care  wantonly  to 
brave. 

At  the  same  time  the  yoke  of  high  priest 
and  scribe  and  pharisee  was  even  heavier 
on  the  necks  of  their  own  people  than  that 
of  the  Roman.  They  had  built  up  a  huge 
superstructure  of  traditions  and  ceremonies 
round  the  law  of  Moses,  which  they  held 
up  to  the  people  as  more  sacred  and  bind- 
ing than  the  law  itself.  This  superstruct- 
ure was  their  special  charge.  This  was, 
according  to  them,  the  great  national  in- 
heritance, the  most  valuable  portion  of  the 
covenant  which  God  had  made  with  their 
fathers.  To  them,  as  leaders  of  their  na- 
tion, —  a  select,  priestly,  and  learned  caste, 
—  this  precious  inheritance  had  been  com- 
mitted. Outside  that  caste,  the  dim  multi- 
tude, "  the  people  which  knoweth  not  the 
law,"  were  despised  while  they  obeyed,  ac- 
cursed as  soon  as  they  showed  any  sign  of 
disobedience.  Such  being  the  state  of  Ju- 
^sea,  it  would  not  be  easy  to  name  in  all 
history  a  less  hopeful  place  for  the  reform- 


l2  THE  MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST. 

ing  mission  of  a  young  carpenter,  a  stran- 
ger from  a  despised  province,  one  entirely 
outside  the  ruling  caste,  though  of  the 
royal  race,  and  who  had  no  position  what- 
ever in  any  rabbinical  school. 

In  Galilee  the  surroundings  were  slight- 
ly different,  but  scarcely  more  promising. 
Herod  Antipas,  the  weakest  of  that  tyrant 
family,  the  seducer  of  his  brother's  wife, 
the  fawner  on  Ceesar,  the  spendthrift  op- 
pressor of  the  people  of  his  tetrarchy,  still 
ruled  in  name  over  the  country,  but  with 
Roman  garrisons  in  the  cities  and  strong- 
holds. Face  to  face  with  him,  and  exercis- 
ing an  imperium  in  imperio  throughout  Gal- 
ilee, were  the  same  priestly  caste,  though 
far  less  formidable  to  the  civil  power,  and 
to  the  people,  than  in  the  southern  prov- 
ince. Along  the  western  coast  of  the  Sea 
of  Galilee,  the  chief  scene  of  our  Lord's 
northern  ministry,  lay  a  net-work  of  towns 
ilensely  inhabited,  and  containing  a  large 
admixture  of  Gentile  traders.  This  infus- 
ion of  foreign  blood,  the  want  of  any  such 


THE  HOLY  LAND  A.   D.  30.  13 

religious  centre  as  Jerusalem,  and  the  con- 
tempt with  which  the  southern  Jews  re- 
garded their  provincial  brethren  of  Galilee, 
had  no  doubt  loosened  to  some  extent  the 
yoke  of  the  pi'iests  and  scribes  and  law- 
yers in  that  province.  But  even  here  their 
traditionary  power  over  the  masses  of  the 
people  was  very  great,  and  the  conse- 
quences of  defying  their  authority  as  penal, 
though  the  penalty  might  be  neither  so 
swift  or  so  certain,  as  in  Jerusalem  itself. 
Such  was  the  society  into  which  Christ 
came. 

It  is  not  easy  to  find  a  parallel  case  in 
the  modern  world,  but  perhaps  the  nearest 
exists  in  a  portion  of  our  own  empire.  The 
condition  of  parts  of  India  in  our  day  re- 
sembles in  some  respects  that  of  Palestine 
in  the  year  A.  D.  30.  In  the  Mahratta 
country,  princes,  not  of  the  native  dynasty, 
but  the  descendants  of  foreign  courtiers 
(like  the  Idumsean  Herods),  are  reigning. 
British  residents  at  their  courts,  hated  and 
feared,  but  practically  all-powerful  as  Ro- 


14  THE  MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST. 

man  procurators,  answer  to  the  officers  and 
garrisons  of  Rome  in  Palestine.  The  peo- 
ple are  in  bondage  to  a  priestly  caste  scarce- 
ly less  heavy  than  that  which  weighed  on 
the  Judasan  and  Galilean  peasantry.  If 
the  Mahrattas  were  JNIohammedans,  and 
^Nlecca  were  situate  in  the  territory  of  Scin- 
diah  or  Holkar;  if  the  influence  of  twelve 
centuries  of  Christian  training  could  be 
wiped  out  of  the  English  character,  and  the 
stubborn  and  fierce  nature  of  the  Jew  sub- 
stituted for  that  of  the  Mahratta ;  a  village 
reformer  amongst  them,  whose  preaching 
outraged  the  Brahmins,  threatened  the  dy- 
nasties, and  disturbed  the  English  residents, 
would  start  under  somewhat  similar  condi- 
tions to  those  which  surrounded  Christ  when 
He  commenced  his  ministry. 

In  one  respect,  and  one  only,  the  time 
eeemed  propitious.  The  mind  and  heart  of 
the  nation  was  full  of  the  expectation  of  a 
coming  Messiah — a  King  who  should  break 
every  yoke  from  off  the  necks  of  his  peo- 
ple, and  should  rule  over  the  nations,  sit- 


THE  HOLT  LAND  A.   D.  30.  15 

ting  on  the  throne  of  David.  The  intensity 
of  this  expectation  had,  in  the  opening  days 
of  his  ministry,  drawn  crowds  into  the  wil- 
derness beyond  Jordan  from  all  parts  of 
Judaea  and  Galilee,  at  the  summons  of  a 
preacher  who  had  caught  up  the  last  ca- 
dence of  the  song  of  their  last  great  prophet, 
and  was  proclaiming  that  both  the  deliver- 
ance and  the  kingdom  which  they  were 
looking  for  were  at  hand.  In  those  crowds 
who  flocked  to  hear  John  the  Baptist  there 
were  doubtless  some  even  amongst  the 
priests  and  scribes,  and  many  amongst  the 
poor  Jewish  and  Galilean  peasantry,  who 
felt  that  there  was  a  heavier  j^oke  upon 
them  than  that  of  Rome  or  of  Herod  An- 
tipas.  But  the  record  of  the  next  three 
years  shows  too  clearly  that  even  these 
were  wholly  unprepared  for  any  other  than 
a  kingdom  of  this  world,  and  a  temporal 
throne  to  be  set  up  in  the  holy  city. 

And  so,  from  the  first,  Christ  had  to  con- 
tend not  only  against  the  whole  of  the  es- 
tablished powers  of  Palestine,  but  against 


16  THE  MANLINESS  OF  CHRIST. 

the  highest  aspirations  of  the  best  of  his 
countrymen.  These  very  Messianic  hopes, 
in  fact,  proved  the  greatest  stumbling-block 
in  his  path.  Those  who  entertained  them 
most  vividly  had  the  greatest  difficulty  in 
accepting  the  carpenter's  son  as  the  prom- 
ised Deliverer.  A  few  days  only  before 
the  end  He  had  sorrowfully  to  warn  the 
most  intimate  and  loving  of  his  compan- 
ions and  disciples,  "Ye  know  not  what 
spirit  ye  are  of." 

We  must  endeavor  to  keep  these  exter- 
nal conditions  and  surroundings  of  the  life 
of  a  Galilean  peasant  in  the  reigns  of  Au- 
gustus and  Tiberius  Csesar  in  our  minds,  if 
we  really  wish  honestly  to  understand  and 
appreciate  the  work  done  by  one  of  them 
in  those  three  short  years,  or  the  character 
of  the  doer  of  it. 


PART  n. 

THE  TESTS   OF  MAKLDTESS. 

•'0t7ius  in  palatio  Julius  Atticus  speculator,  cruentum 
gladium  ostentans,  occisum  a  se  Othonem,  exclamavit;  et 
Galba,  'Commilito,'  inquit,  '  quis  jussit?  '  Insigni  animo  ad 
coercendam  militarem  licentiam,  minantibus  intrepidus,  ad- 
versus  blandientes  incorruptus."  —  Tacit.  Hist.,  lib.  L,  cap. 

XXXV. 

Oke  other  precaution  we  must  take  at 
the  outset  of  our  inquiry,  and  that  is,  to 
settle  for  ourselves,  without  diverging  into 
useless  metaphysics,  what  we  mean  by 
"manliness,  manfulness,  courage."  My 
friends  of  the  Christian  Guild  seemed  to 
assume  that  these  words  all  have  the  same 
meaning,  and  denote  the  same  qualities. 
Now,  is  this  so?  I  think  not,  if  we  take 
the  common  use  of  the  words.  "  Manliness 
and  manfulness  "  are  synonymous,  but  they 
embrace  more  than  we  ordinarily  mean  by 
the  word  "  courage ; "  for  instance,  tender- 


18  THE  MANLINESS  OF  CHRIST. 

ness,  and  thoughtfulness  for  others.  They 
include  that  courage  which  hes  at  the  root 
of  all  manliness,  but  is,  in  fact,  only  its 
lowest  or  rudest  form.  Indeed,  we  must 
admit  that  it  is  not  exclusively  a  human 
qviality  at  all,  but  one  which  we  share  with 
other  animals,  and  which  some  of  them  — 
for  instance,  the  bulldog  and  weasel  —  ex- 
hibit with  a  certainty  and  a  thoroughness 
which  is  very  rare  amongst  mankind. 

In  what,  then,  does  courage,  in  this  ordi- 
nary  sense  of  the  word,  consist  ?  First,  in 
persistency,  or  the  determination  to  have 
one's  own  way,  coupled  with  contempt  for 
safety  and  ease,  and  readiness  to  risk  pain 
or  death  in  getting  one's  own  way.  This 
is,  let  us  readily  admit,  a  valuable,  even  a 
noble  quality,  but  an  animal  quality  rather 
than  a  human  or  manly  one,  and  obviously 
not  that  quality  of  which  the  promoters  of 
the  Christian  Guild  were  in  search.  For  I 
fear  we  cannot  deny  that  this  kind  of  cour- 
age is  by  no  means  incompatible  with  those 
savage  or  brutal  habits   of  violence  which 


THE  TESTS   OF  MANLINESS.  19 

fche  Guild  was  specially  designed  to  put 
down  and  root  out  amongst  our  people. 
What  they  desired  to  cultivate  was  ob- 
viously, not  animal,  but  manly,  courage ; 
and  the  fact  that  we  are  driven  to  use  these 
epithets  "animal"  and  "manly"  to  make 
our  meaning  clear,  shows,  I  think,  the  ne- 
cessity of  insisting  on  this  distinction  and 
keeping  it  well  in  mind. 

We  should  note,  also,  that  the  tests  of 
the  Guild  were,  with  one  exception,  not 
really  adapted  as  tests  even  of  animal  cour- 
age, much  less  of  manliness.  For  they  pro- 
posed that  the  possession  of  the  Royal 
Humane  Society's  medal,  or  the  badge  oi 
excellence  in  athletic  games,  should  be  the 
qualification  for  the  first  members.  Now 
the  possession  of  the  medal  does  amount  to 
frimd  facie  evidence,  not  only  of  animal 
courage  but  of  manliness ;  for  it  can  only 
be  won  by  an  act  involving  not  only  per- 
sistency and  contempt  of  pain  and  danger, 
but  self-sacrifice  for  the  welfare  of  another. 
But  proficiency  in   athletic  games  has  no 


20  THE  MANLINESS  OF  CHRIST. 

Buch  meaning,  and  is  not  necessarily  a  test 
even  of  animal  courage,  but  only  of  mus- 
cular power  and  physical  training.  Even 
in  those  games  which,  to  some  extent,  do 
afford  a  test  of  the  persistency,  and  con- 
tempt for  discomfort  or  pain,  which  con- 
stitute animal  courage,  —  such  as  rowing, 
boxing,  and  wrestling,  —  it  is  of  necessity  a 
most  unsatisfactory  one.  For  instance, 
Nelson, — as  courageous  an  Englishman  as 
ever  lived,  who  attacked  a  Polar  bear  with 
a  handspike  when  he  was  a  boy  of  fourteen, 
and  told  his  captain,  when  he  was  scolded 
for  it,  that  he  did  not  know  Mr.  Fear,  — 
with  his  slight  frame  and  weak  constitution, 
could  never  have  won  a  boat  race,  and  in  a 
match  would  have  been  hopelessly  astern  of 
any  one  of  the  crew  of  his  own  barge  ;  and 
the  highest  courage  which  ever  animated  a 
human  body  would  not  enable  the  owner  of 
it,  if  he  were  himself  untrained,  to  stand 
for  five  minutes  against  a  trained  wrestler 
or  boxer. 

Athleticism  is  a  good  thing  if  kept  in  its 


THE  TESTS  Oh   MANLINESS.  21 

place,  but  it  has  come  to  be  very  much 
over-praised  and  over-valued  amongst  us, 
as  I  think  these  proposals  of  the  Christian 
Guild,  for  the  attainment  of  their  most 
admirable  and  needful  aim,  tend  to  show 
clearly  enough,  if  proof  were  needed.  We 
may  say,  then,  I  think,  without  doubt,  that 
its  promoters  were  iiot  on  the  right  scent, 
or  likely  to  get  what  they  were  in  search  of 
by  the  methods  they  proposed  to  use.  For 
after  getting  their  Society  of  Athletes  it 
might  quite  possibly  turn  out  to  be  com- 
posed of  persons  deficient  in  real  manliness. 
While,  however,  keeping  this  conclusion 
well  in  mind,  we  need  not  at  all  depreciate 
athleticism,  which  has  in  it  much  that  is 
useful  to  society,  and  is  indeed  admirable 
enough  in  its  own  way.  But  as  the  next 
step  in  our  inquiry,  let  us  bear  well  in 
mind  that  athleticism  is  not  what  we  mean 
here.  True  manliness  is  as  likely  to  be 
found  in  a  weak  as  in  a  strong  body. 
Other  things  being  equal,  we  may  perhaps 
admit  Cthongh  I  should  hesitate  to  do  so) 


22  THE  MANLINESS   OF   CHRIST. 

that  a  man  with  a  highly-trained  and  de 
veloped  body  will  be  more  courageous  than 
a  weak  man.  But  we  must  take  this  cau- 
tion with  us,  that  a  great  athlete  may  be  a 
brute  or  a  coward,  while  a  truly  manly 
man  can  be  neither. 

Having  got  thus  far,  and  satisfied  our- 
selves what  is  not  of  the  essence  of  manli- 
ness, though  often  assumed  to  be  so  (as  by 
the  promoters  of  the  Christian  Guild),  let 
us  see  if  we  cannot  get  on  another  step, 
and  ascertain  what  is  of  that  essence.  And 
here  it  may  be  useful  to  take  a  few  well- 
known  instances  of  courageous  deeds  and 
examine  them ;  because  if  we  can  find  out 
any  common  quality  in  them  we  shall  have 
lighted  on  something  which  is  of  the  es- 
sence of,  or  inseparable  from,  that  manli- 
ness which  includes  courage  —  that  manli- 
ness of  which  we  are  in  search. 

I  will  take  two  or  three  at  hazard  from  a 
book  in  which  they  abound,  and  which  was 
a  great  favorite  here  some  years  ago,  as  I 
hope  it  is  still,  I  mean   Napier's  "  Penin 


THE  TESTS  OF  MANUNESS.  23 

Bular  War."  At  the  end  of  the  storming 
of  Badajoz,  after  speaking  of  the  officers, 
Napier  goes  on,  "  Who  shall  describe  the 
springing  valor  of  that  Portuguese  grena- 
dier who  was  killed  the  foremost  man  at 
Santa  Maria?  or  the  martial  fury  of  that 
desperate  rifleman,  who,  in  his  resolution  to 
win,  thrust  himself  beneath  the  chained 
sword  blades,  and  then  suffered  the  enemy 
to  dash  his  head  in  pieces  with  the  ends  of 
their  muskets."  Again,  at  the  Coa,  "  a 
north  of  Ireland  man  named  Stewart,  but 
jocularly  called  '  the  Boy,'  because  of  his 
youth,  nineteen,  and  of  his  gigantic  stature 
and  strength,  who  had  fought  bravely  and 
displayed  great  intelligence  beyond  the 
river,  was  one  of  the  last  men  who  came 
down  to  thb  bridge,  but  he  would  not  pass. 
Turning  round  he  regarded  the  French 
with  a  grim  look,  and  spoke  aloud  as  fol- 
lows :  '  So  this  is  the  end  of  our  brag. 
This  is  our  first  battle,  and  we  retreat ' 
The  boy  Stewart  mil  not  live  to  hear  that 
said.'     Then  striding  forward  in  his  giant 


24  THE  MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST. 

might  he  fell  furiously  on  the  nearest  ene- 
mies with  the  bayonet,  refused  the  quarter 
they  seemed  desirous  of  granting,  and  died 
fighting  in  the  midst  of  them." 

"  Still  more  touching,  more  noble,  more 
heroic,  was  the  death  of  Sergeant  Robert 
McQuade.  During  McLeod's  rush  this 
man,  also  from  the  north  of  Ireland,  saw 
two  men  level  their  muskets  on  rests 
against  a  high  gap  in  a  bank,  awaiting  the 
uprise  of  an  enemy.  The  present  Adju- 
tant-general Brown,  then  a  lad  of  sixteen, 
attempted  to  ascend  at  the  fatal  spot.  Mc- 
Quade, himself  only  twenty-four  years  of 
age,  pvilled  him  back,  saying,  in  a  calm, 
decided  tone,  '  You  are  too  young,  sir,  to  be 
killed,'  and  then  offering  his  own  person  to 
the  fire  fell  dead  pierced  with  both  balls." 
And,  speaking  of  the  British  soldier  gen- 
erally, he  says  in  his  preface,  "  What  they 
were  their  successors  now  are.  Witness 
the  wreck  of  the  Birkenhead,  where  four 
hundred  men,  at  the  call  of  their  heroic  offi- 
cers, Captains  Wright  and  Girardot,  calmly 


THE   TESTS   OF  MANLINESS.  25 

and  without  a  murmur  accepted  death  in  a 
horrible  form  rather  than  endanger  the 
women  and  children  saved  in  the  boats. 
The  records  of  the  world  furnish  no  parallel 
to  this  self-devotion."  Let  us  add  to  these 
two  very  recent  examples  of  which  we  have 
all  been  reading  in  the  last  few  months :  the 
poor  colliers  who  worked  day  and  night 
at  Pont-y-pridd,  with  their  lives  in  their 
hands,  to  rescue  their  buried  comrades ; 
and  the  gambler  in  St.  Louis  who  went 
straight  from  the  gaming-table  into  the  fire, 
to  the  rescue  of  women  and  children,  and 
died  of  the  hurts  after  his  third  return  from 
the  flames. 

Looking,  then,  at  these  several  cases,  we 
find  in  each  that  resolution  in  the  actors  tc 
have  their  way,  contempt  for  ease,  and 
readiness  to  risk  pain  or  death,  which  we 
noted  as  the  special  characteristics  of  ani 
mal  courage,  which  we  share  with  the  bull- 
dog and  weasel. 

So  far  all  of  them  are  alike.     Can  we  get 
ajjy  further?     Not  much,  if  we   take   the 


26  THE  MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST. 

case  of  the  rifleman  who  thrust  his  head 
under  the  sword-blades  and  allowed  his 
brains  to  be  knocked  out  sooner  than  draw 
it  back,  or  that  of  "  the  boy  Stewart." 
These  are  intense  assertions  of  individual 
will  and  force, —  avowals  of  the  rough  hard- 
handed  man  that  he  has  that  in  him  which 
enables  him  to  defy  pain  and  danger  and 
death,  —  this  and  little  or  nothing  more; 
and  no  doubt  a  very  valuable  and  admira- 
ble thing  as  it  stands. 

But  we  feel,  I  think,  at  once,  that  there 
is  something  more  in  the  act  of  Sergeant 
McQuade,  and  of  the  miners  in  Pont-y- 
pridd — something  higher  and  more  admi- 
rable. And  it  is  not  a  mere  question  of 
degree,  of  more  or  less,  in  the  quality  of 
animal  courage.  The  rifleman  and  "  the 
boy  Stewart  "  were  each  of  them  persistent 
to  death,  and  no  man  can  be  more.  The 
acts  were,  then,  equally  courageous,  so  far 
as  persistency  and  scorn  of  danger  and 
death  are  concerned.  We  must  look  else- 
where  for   the  difference,    for   that  which 


THE  TESTS  OF  MANLINESS.  27 

toucbes  us  more  deeply  in  the  case  of  Ser- 
geant McQuade  than  in  that  of  "  the  boy 
Stewart,"  and  can  only  find  it  in  the  mo- 
tive. At  least  it  seems  to  me  that  the 
worth  of  the  last  lies  mainly  in  the  sub- 
limity of  self-assertion,  of  the  other  in  the 
sublimity  of  self-sacrifice. 

And  this  holds  good  again  in  the  case 
of  the  Birkenhead.  Captain  Wright  gave 
the  word  for  the  men  to  fall  in  on  deck  by 
companies,  knowing  that  the  sea  below 
them  was  full  of  sharks,  and  that  the  ship 
could  not  possibly  float  till  the  boats  came 
back ;  and  the  men  fell  in,  knowing  this 
also,  and  stood  at  attention  without  utter- 
ing a  word,  till  she  heeled  over  and  went 
down  under  them.  And  Napier,  with  all 
his  delight  in  physical  force  and  prowess, 
and  his  intense  appreciation  of  the  qualities 
which  shine  most  brightly  in  the  fiery  ac- 
tion of  battle,  gives  the  palm  to  these  when 
he  writes,  "  The  records  of  the  world  fur- 
bish no  parallel  to  this  self-devotion."  He 
was  no  mean  judge  in  such  a  case;  and,  if 


28  THE  MANLINESS  OF  CHRIST.. 

he  is  right,  as  I  think  he  is,  do  we  not  get 
another  side-light  on  our  inquiry,  and  find 
that  the  highest  temper  of  physical  courage 
is  not  to  be  found,  or  perfected,  in  action 
but  in  repose  ?  All  physical  effort  relieves 
the  strain,  and  makes  it  easier  to  persist 
unto  death,  under  the  stimulus  and  excite- 
ment of  the  shock  of  battle,  or  of  violent 
exertion  of  any  kind,  than  when  the  effort 
has  to  be  made  with  grounded  arms.  In 
other  words,  may  we  not  say  that  in  the 
face  of  danger  self-restraint  is  after  all  the 
highest  form  of  self-assertion,  and  a  charac- 
teristic of  manliness  as  distinguished  from 
courage  ? 

But  we  have  only  been  looking  hitherto 
at  one  small  side  of  a  great  subject,  at  the 
courage  which  is  tested  in  times  of  terror, 
■)n  the  battle-field,  in  the  sinking  ship,  the 
poisoned  mine,  the  blazing  house.  Such 
jesting  times  come  to  few,  and  to  these  not 
often  in  their  lives.  But,  on  the  other 
nand,  the  daily  life  of  every  one  of  us  teems 
with  occasions  which  will  try  the  temper  of 


THE  TESTS  UF  MANLINESS.  29 

our  courage  as  searcliingly,  though  not  as 
terribly,  as  battle-field  or  fire  or  wreck. 
For  we  are  born  into  a  state  of  war ;  with 
falsehood  and  disease  and  wrong  and  mis- 
ery, in  a  thousand  forms,  lying  all  around 
us,  and  the  voice  within  calling  on  us  to 
take  our  stand  as  men  in  the  eternal  battle 
against  these. 

And  in  this  life-long  fight,  to  be  waged 
by  every  one  of  us  single-handed  against  a 
host  of  foes,  the  last  requisite  for  a  good 
fight,  the  last  proof  and  test  of  our  courage 
and  manfulness,  must  be  loyalty  to  truth  — 
the  most  rare  and  difficult  of  all  human 
qualities.  For  such  loyalty,  as  it  grows  in 
perfection,  asks  ever  more  and  more  of  us, 
and  sets  before  us  a  standard  of  manliness 
always  rising  higher  and  higher. 

And  this  is  the  great  lesson  which  we 
shall  learn  from  Christ's  life,  the  more 
earnestly  and  faithfully  we  study  it.  "  For 
this  end  was  I  born,  and  for  this  cause 
same  I  into  the  world,  to  bear  witness 
to  the  truth."     To  bear  this  witness  against 


30  THE  MANLINESS  OF  CHRIST. 

avowed  and  open  enemies  is  comparatively 
easy.  But  to  bear  it  against  those  we  love, 
against  those  whose  judgment  and  opinions 
we  respect,  in  defense  or  futherance  of  that 
which  approves  itself  as  true  to  our  own  in- 
most conscience,  this  is  the  last  and  abiding 
test  of  courage  and  of  manliness.  How  nat- 
ural, nay,  how  inevitable  it  is,  that  we 
should  fall  into  the  habit  of  appreciating 
and  judging  things  mainly  by  the  standards 
»n  common  use  amongst  those  we  respect 
and  love.  Bat  these  very  standards  are  apt 
to  break  down  with  us  when  we  are  brought 
face  to  face  with  some  question  which  takes 
us  ever  so  little  out  of  ourselves  and  our 
usual  moods.  At  such  times  we  are  driven 
to  admit  in  our  hearts  that  we,  and  those 
we  respect  and  love,  have  been  looking  at 
and  judging  things,  not  truthfully,  and 
therefore  not  courageously  and  manfully, 
but  conventionally.  And  then  comes  one 
of  the  most  searching  of  all  trials  of  courage 
Bnd  manliness,  when  a  man  or  woman  is 
called  to  stand  by  what  approves  itself  to 


TEE  TESTS   OF  MANLINESS.  31 

their  consciences  as  true,  and  to  protest  for 
it  through  evil  report  and  good  report, 
against  all  discouragement  and  opposition 
from  those  they  love  or  respect.  The  sens^ 
of  antagonism  instead  of  rest,  of  distrust 
and  alienation  instead  of  approval  and  sym- 
pathy, which  such  times  bring,  is  a  test 
which  tries  the  very  heart  and  reins,  and 
it  is  one  which  meets  us  at  all  ages,  and  in 
all  conditions  of  life.  Emerson's  hero  is  the 
man  who,  "  taking  both  reputation  and  life 
in  his  hand,  will  with  perfect  urbanity  dare 
the  gibbet  and  the  mob,  by  the  absolute 
truth  of  his  speech  and  rectitude  of  his 
behavior."  And,  even  in  our  peaceful 
ftnd  prosperous  England,  absolute  truth  of 
speech  and  rectitude  of  behavior  will  not 
fail  to  bring  their  fiery  trials,  if  also  in  the 
end  their  exceeding  great  rewards. 

We  may  note,  too,  that  in  testing  manli- 
ness as  distinguished  from  courage,  we  shall 
have  to  reckon  sooner  or  later  with  the  idea 
of  duty.  Nelson's  column  stands  in  the 
most  conspicuous   site  in  all   London,  and 


32  THE  MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST. 

stands  there  with  all  men's  approval,  not 
because  of  his  daring  courage.  Lord  Peter- 
borough in  a  former  generation,  Lord  Dun- 
donald  in  the  one  which  succeeded,  were 
at  least  as  eminent  for  reckless  and  success- 
ful daring.  But  it  is  because  the  idea  of 
devotion  to  duty  is  inseparably  connected 
with  Nelson's  name  in  the  minds  of  Eng- 
lishmen, that  he  has  been  lifted  high  above 
all  his  compeers  in  England's  capital. 

In  the  throes  of  one  of  the  terrible  revo- 
lutions of  the  worst  days  of  imperial  Rome, 
—  when  probably  the  cruellest  mob  and 
most  licentious  soldiery  of  all  time  were 
raging  round  the  palace  of  the  Csesars,  and 
the  chances  of  an  hour  would  decide  whether 
Galba  or  Otho  should  rule  the  world,  the 
alternative  being  a  violent  death,  —  an  of- 
ficer of  the  guard,  one  Julius  Atticus,  rushed 
into  Galba's  presence  with  a  bloody  sword, 
boasting  that  he  had  slain  his  rival,  Otho. 
"  My  comrade,  by  whose  order  ?  "  was  hia 
only  greeting  from  the  old  Pagan  chief. 
And  the  story  has  come  down  through  eigh- 


TEE  TESTS  OF  MANLINESS.  33 

teen  centuries,  in  the  terse  strong  sentences 
of  the  great  historian  prefixed  to  this  chap- 
ter, a  test  for  all  times. 

Comrade,  who  ordered  thee  ?  whose  will 
art  thou  doing  ?  It  is  the  question  which 
has  to  be  asked  of  every  fighting  man,  in 
whatever  part  of  the  great  battle-field  he 
comes  to  the  front,  and  determines  the  man- 
liness of  soldier,  statesman,  parson,  of  every 
Btrong  man,  and  suffering  woman. 

"  Three  roots  bear  up  Dominion  :  knowledge,  will, 
These  two  are  strong  ;  but  stronger  still  the  third, 

Obedience  :  'tis  the  great  tap  root,  which  still, 
Knit  round  the  rock  of  Duty,  is  not  stirred. 

Though  storm  and  tempest  spend  their  utmost  skill." 

I  think  that  the  more  thoroughly  we  sift 
and  search  out  this  question  the  more  surely 
we  shall  come  to  this  as  the  conclusion  of 
the  whole  matter.  Tenacity  of  will,  or  will- 
fulness, lies  at  the  root  of  all  courage,  but 
courage  can  only  rise  into  true  manliness 
when  the  will  is  surrendered  ;  and  the  more 
absolute  the  surrender  of  the  will  the  more 
perfect  will  be  the  temper  of  our  courage 
and  the  strength  of  our  manliness. 


64  THE  MANLINESS  OF  CHRIST. 

"  Strong  Son  of  God,  immortal  Love," 

our  laureate  has  pleaded,  in  the  moment  of 
his  highest  inspiration, 

"  Our  wills  are  ours  to  make  them  thine." 
And  that  strong  Son  of  God  to  whom  this 
cry  has  gone  up  in  our  day,  and  in  all  days, 
has  left  us  the  secret  of  his  strength  in  the 
words,  "  I  am  come  to  do  the  will  of  my 
Father  and  your  Father." 


PART  in. 

Christ's  boyhood. 

"  So  close  is  glory  to  our  dust, 
So  near  is  God  to  man ; 
Wliea  duty  whispers  low,  Thou  must, 
The  youth  replies,  I  can."  —  Emerson. 

One  great  difficulty  meets  the  student  of 
our  Lord's  life  and  character  from  what- 
ever side,  and  with  whatever  purpose,  he 
may  approach  t.  The  whole  authentic  rec- 
ord of  that  life,  up  to  the  time  of  his  bap- 
tism, when  He  was  already  thirty  years 
old,  is  comprised  in  half-a-dozen  sentences. 
All  that  we  know  is  the  story  of  his  visit 
to  Jerusalem  at  the  age  of  twelve,  when  He 
was  lost  in  the  crush  of  the  great  feast,  and 
his  parents  turned  back  to  look  for  Him  : 
"  And  it  came  to  pass,  that  after  three  days 
they  found  Him  in  the  temple,  sitting  at  the 
feet  of  the  doctors,  both  hearing  them  and 
asking  them  questions.     And  all  that  heard 


36  THE  MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST. 

Him  were  astonished  at  his  understanding 
and  answers.  And  when  they  saw  Him 
they  were  amazed,  and  his  mother  said 
unto  Him,  Son,  why  hast  thou  so  dealt  with 
us  ?  Behold,  thy  father  and  I  have  sought 
thee  sorrowing.  And  He  said  unto  them. 
How  is  it  that  ye  sought  me  ?  Wist  ye  not 
that  I  must  be  about  my  Father's  business? 
And  they  understood  not  this  saying  which 
He  spake  unto  them.  And  He  went  down 
to  Nazareth  and  was  subject  unto  them." 

The  silence  of  the  evangelists  as  to  all 
other  details  of  his  youth  and  early  man- 
hood, except  this  one  short  incident,  which 
belongs  rather  to  his  public  than  to  his 
private  life,  is  intended  no  doubt  to  fix  our 
attention  on  the  former,  as  that  which  most 
concerns  us.  At  the  same  time  it  is  impos- 
sible for  those  who  will  follow,  as  best  they 
may,  Christ's  steps  and  teaching,  setting 
before  themselves  that  highest  outcome  and 
h.im  of  it  all,  "be  ye  perfect  as  your  Father 
in  heaven  is  perfect,"  not  to  turn  often  in 
thought  to  those  early  years  of  his  in  which 


CHRIST S  BOYHOOD.  37 

the  weapons  must  have  been  forged,  and 
the  character  formed  and  matured,  for  the 
mighty  war. 

And  it  cannot  be  denied  that,  to  such 
seekers,  this  short  temple  story  is  in  many 
ways  baffling,  even  discouraging.  There  is 
something  at  first  sight,  willful  indeed,  pos- 
sibly courageous,  but  not  manly,  in  a  boy 
of  twelve  staying  behind  his  parents  in  a 
strange  city  without  their  knowledge  or 
consent ;  something  thoughtless,  almost  un- 
gracious, in  the  words  of  reply  to  Mary's 
"  thy  father  and  I  have  sought  thee  sorrow- 
ing "  — "  How  is  it  that  ye  sought  me  ? 
wist  ye  not  that  I  must  be  about  my 
Father's  business  ?  "  (or  "  in  my  Father's 
courts,"  as  the  words  are  more  truly  trans- 
lated). 

The  clue  to  this  apparent  divergence 
from  the  perfect  manly  life  is  given  with 
rare  insight  and  beauty  in  Mr.  Holman 
Hunt's  great  picture.  At  any  rate  the  face 
and  attitude  of  the  boy  there  seemed  for 
the  first  time   to  make   clear  to   me  the 

16^7 


S8  THE  MANLINESS  OF  CHRIST. 

meaning  of  the  recorded  incident,  and  to 
cast  a  flood  of  light  on  those  eighteen  years 
of  preparation  which  yet  remained  before 
He  should  be  ready  for  his  public  work. 
The  real  meaning  and  scope  of  that  work, 
in  all  its  terrible  majesty  and  suffering 
and  grandeur,  have  just  begun  to  dawn  on 
the  boy's  mind.  The  first  sight  of  Jeru- 
salem, and  of  the  temple,  has  stirred  new 
and  strange  thoughts  within  Him.  The  re- 
plies of  the  doctors  to  his  eager  question- 
ings have  lighted  up  the  consciousness 
which  must  have  been  dimly  working  in 
Him  already,  that  he  was  not  altogether 
like  those  around  Him  —  the  children  with 
whom  He  was  accustomed  to  play,  the 
parents  at  whose  knees  He  had  been 
brought  up. 

Many  of  us  must  have  seen,  all  must 
have  read  of,  instances  of  a  call  to  their 
spirits  being  clearly  recognized  by  very 
young  children,  and  coloring  and  molding 
their  whole  after  lives.  We  can  scarcely 
say   how   early  this  awakening  of   a   con- 


CHRIST'S  BOYHOOD.  3S 

Bciousness  of  what  be  is,  of  what  lie  is 
meant  to  do,  has  come  to  this  or  that  young 
child,  but  no  one  will  question  tliat  it  does 
so  come  in  many  instances  long  before  the 
age  of  twelve.  And  so  I  think  we  may 
safely  assume  that  when  Christ  came  up  for 
the  first  time  to  the  feast  which  commemo- 
rated the  great  deliverance  of  his  nation, 
the  boy  was  already  conscious  of  a  voice 
within,  calling  Him  to  devote  Himself  to 
the  work  to  which  the  God  of  his  fathers 
had  in  like  manner  called  in  their  turn, 
Moses,  and  Samuel,  and  David,  and  Elijah, 
and  Judas  Maccabeeus,  and  all  that  grand 
roll  of  patriot  prophets,  and  kings,  and 
warriors,  with  whose  names  and  doings  He 
would  be  already  familiar.  Amidst  all  the 
pomp  of  the  great  festival  He  found  the 
chosen  people  weighed  down  by  a  sterner 
and  more  degrading  bondage  than  had  be- 
fallen them  in  all  their  long  annals.  And 
all  that  He  heard  and  saw  in  the  holy  city, 
amongst  the  crowds  of  worshippers,  and 
the  rabbis  teaching  in  the  temple  courts  — 


40  THE  MANLINESS  OF  CHRIST. 

the  first  view  of  the  holy  hill  of  Sion,  the 
joy  of  the  whole  earth  —  the  strange  con- 
trast of  the  eager  traffic,  the  gross  Mam- 
mon worship,  the  huge  slaughtering  of 
beasts  with  all  the  brutal  accompaniments, 
with  that  universal  longing  and  expecta- 
tion in  those  multitudes  for  the  Messiah, 
who  should  lead  and  work  out  the  final  de- 
liverance and  triumph  of  the  people  of 
God  in  that  generation  —  must  have  stirred 
new  questionings  within  Him,  questionings 
whether  that  voice  which  He  had  been  al- 
ready hearing  in  his  own  heart  was  not 
only  a  call,  such  as  might  come  to  any  He- 
brew boy,  but  the  call  —  whether  amongst 
all  that  vast  assembly  He  was  not  the  one 
upon  whom  the  supreme  task  must  be  laid, 
who  must  be  the  deliverer  of  this  people,  so 
certainly  and  eagerly  looked  for. 

To  the  young  spirit  before  whose  inward 
eye  such  a  vision  is  opening  all  human  ties 
would  shrink  back,  and  be  for  the  moment 
torgotten.  And,  when  recalled  suddenly 
by  the  words  of  his  mother,  the  half  con- 


CHRIST'S  BOYHOOD.  41 

scions  dreamy  answer,  "  How  is  it  that  ye 
sought  me  ?  Wist  ye  not  that  I  must  be  in 
my  Father's  courts,  about  his  business  ? " 
loses  all  its  apparent  willfulness  and  abrupt- 
ness. 

And  so,  full  of  this  new  question  and 
great  wonder,  He  went  home  to  the  village 
in  Galilee  with  his  parents,  and  was  sub- 
ject to  them  ;  and  the  curtain  falls  for  us 
on  his  boyhood  and  youth  and  early  man- 
hood. But  as  nothing  but  what  is  most 
important,  and  necessary  for  understanding 
all  of  his  life  which  we  need  for  om*  own 
growth  into  his  likeness,  is  told  in  these 
simple  gospel  narratives,  it  would  seem  that 
this  vivid  light  is  thrown  on  that  first  visit 
to  Jerusalem  because  it  was  the  crisis  in  our 
Lord's  early  life  which  bears  most  directly 
on  his  work  for  our  race.  If  so,  we  must, 
I  think,  allow  that  the  question  once  fairly 
presented  to  the  boy's  mind  would  never 
again  have  left  it.  Day  by  day  it  would 
have  been  coming  back  with  increasing  in- 
sistency, gathering  power  and  weight.    And 


i2  THE  MANLINESS  OF  CHRIST. 

as  He  submitted  it  day  by  day  to  the  God 
whom  prophet  and  Psalmist  had  taught 
every  child  of  the  nation  to  look  upon  as 
"  about  his  path  and  about  his  bed,  and 
knowing  every  thought  of  his  heart,"  the 
consciousness  must  have  gained  strength 
and  power.  As  the  habit  of  self-surrender 
and  simple  obedience  to  the  voice  within 
grew  more  perfect,  and  more  a  part  of  his 
very  being,  the  call  must  have  sounded  more 
and  more  cleai-ly. 

And,  as  He  was  in  all  things  tempted 
like  as  we  are,  again  and  again  must  his 
human  nature  have  shrunk  back  and  tried 
every  way  of  escape  from  this  task,  the  call 
to  which  was  haunting  Him  ;  while  every 
succeeding  month  and  year  of  life  must 
have  disclosed  to  Him  more  and  more  of  its 
peril  and  its  hopelessness,  as  well  as  of  its 
majesty. 

We  have,  then,  to  picture  to  ourselves 
this  struggle  and  discipline  going  on  for 
eighteen  years  —  the  call  sounding  contin- 
ually in  his  ears,  and  the  boy,  the  youth 


CHRIST S  BOYHOOD.  43 

the  strong  man,  each  in  turn  solicited  by 
the  special  temptations  of  his  age,  and  ris- 
ing clear  above  them  through  the  strength 
of  perfect  obedience,  the  strength  which 
comes  from  the  daily  fulfillment  of  daily  du- 
ties —  that  "  strength  in  the  Lord  "  which 
St.  Paul  holds  up  to  us  as  possible  for  every 
human  being.  Think  over  this  long  proba- 
tion, and  satisfy  yourselves  whether  it  is 
easy,  whether  it  is  possible  to  form  any 
higher  ideal  of  perfect  manliness. 

And  without  any  morbid  curiosity,  and 
I  think  with  profit,  we  may  follow  out  the 
thoughts  which  this  long  period  of  quiet 
suggests.  We  know  from  the  evangelists 
only  this,  that  He  remained  in  obscurity  in 
g,  retired  village  of  Galilee,  and  subject  to 
his  reputed  father  and  mother.  That  He 
^Iso  remained  in  great  seclusion  while  liv- 
ing the  simple  peasant  life  of  Nazareth  we 
may  infer  from  the  surprise,  not  unmixed 
with  anger  and  alarm,  of  his  own  family, 
when,  after  his  baptism,  He  began  his  pub- 
lic career  amongst  them.     And  yet,  on  that 


44  THE  MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST. 

day  wlien  He  rose  to  speak  in  the  syna- 
gogue, it  is  clear  that  the  act  was  one  which 
commended  itself  in  the  first  instance  to  his 
family  and  neighbors.  The  eyes  of  all 
present  were  at  once  fijxed  on  Him  as  on 
one  who  might  be  expected  to  stand  in  the 
scribe's  place,  from  whom  they  might  learn 
something,  a  Man  who  had  a  right  to  speak. 
Indeed,  it  is  impossible  to  suppose  that 
He  could  have  lived  in  their  midst  from 
childhood  to  full  manhood  without  attract 
ing  the  attention,  and  stirring  many  ques- 
tionings in  the  minds,  of  all  those  with 
whom  He  was  brought  into  contact.  The 
stories  in  the  Apocryphal  Gospels  of  the  ex- 
ercise of  miraculous  powers  by  Christ  as  a 
child  and  boy  may  be  wholly  disregarded ; 
but  we  may  be  sure  that  such  a  life  as  his, 
though  lived  in  the  utmost  possible  seclu- 
sion, must  have  impressed  every  one  with 
whom  He  came  in  contact,  from  the  scribe 
ivho  taught  the  Scriptures  in  Nazareth  to 
the  children  who  sat  by  his  side  to  learn,  or 
met  Him  by  chance  in  the  vineyards  or  on 


CHRIST'S  BOYHOOD.  4o 

the  hill-sides.  That  He  was  diligent  in 
using  such  means  for  study  as  were  within 
his  reach,  if  it  needed  proof,  would  appear 
from  his  perfect  familiarity  with  the  laws 
and  history  of  his  country  at  the  opening  of 
his  ministry.  And  the  mysterious  story  of 
the  crisis  immediately  following  his  baptism, 
in  which  He  wrestled,  as  it  were,  face  to 
face  with  the  tempter  and  betrayer  of  man- 
kind, indicates  to  us  the  nature  of  the  daily 
battle  which  He  must  have  been  waging, 
from  his  earliest  infancy,  or  at  any  rate  ever 
since  his  first  visit  to  Jerusalem.  No  one 
can  suppose  for  a  moment  that  the  trial 
came  on  Him  for  the  first  time  after  the 
great  prophet  to  whom  all  the  nation  were 
flocking  had  owned  Him  as  the  coming 
Christ.  That  recognition  removed,  indeed, 
the  last  doubt  from  his  mind,  and  gave  Him 
the  signal  for  which  He  had  been  patiently 
waiting,  that  the  time  was  come  and  He 
•nust  set  forth  from  his  retirement.  But 
the  assurance  that  the  call  would  come  at 
»ome  time  must  have  been  growing  on  Him 


46  THE  MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST. 

in  all  those  years,  and  so  when  it  does  come 
He  is  perfectly  prepared. 

In  his  first  public  discourse  in  the  syna- 
gogue of  Nazareth  we  find  Him  at  once  an- 
nouncing the  fulfillment  of  the  hopes  which 
all  around  Him  were  cherishing.  He  pro- 
claims, without  any  preface  or  hesitation, 
with  the  most  perfect  directness  and  confi- 
dence, the  full  gospel  of  the  kingdom  of 
heaven.  "The  time  is  fulfilled,  and  the 
kingdom  of  God  is  at  hand."  He  takes  for 
the  text  of  his  first  discourse  the  passage  in 
Isaiah :  "  The  Spirit  of  the  Lord  is  upon 
me,  because  he  hath  anointed  me  to  preach 
the  gospel  to  the  poor  ;  he  hath  sent  me  to 
heal  the  broken-hearted,  to  preach  deliver- 
ance to  the  captive,  the  recovery  of  sight  to 
the  blind,  to  set  at  liberty  them  that  are 
bruised,  to  preach  the  acceptable  year  of  the 
Lord,"  and  proceeds  to  expound  how  "this 
day  is  this  scripture  fulfilled  in  your  ears." 
And  within  the  next  few  days  He  delivers  his 
Sermon  on  the  Mount,  of  which  we  have  the 
full  record,  and  in  which  we  find  the  mean* 


CEEIST'S  BOYHOOD.  4r 

ing,  and  character,  and  principles  of  the 
kingdom,  laid  down  once  and  for  all.  Mark, 
that  there  is  no  hesitation,  no  ambiguity,  no 
doubt  as  to  who  He  is,  or  what  message 
He  has  to  deliver.  "  I  have  not  come  to  de- 
stroy, but  to  fulfill  the  law  whicli  my  Father 
and  your  Father  has  given  you,  and  which 
you  have  misunderstood.  This  which  I  am 
now  unfolding  to  you  is  the  meaning  of 
that  law,  this  is  the  will  of  my  Father  who 
is  in  heaven." 

Thus  He  springs  at  once,  as  it  were, 
full-armed  into  the  arena;  and  it  is  this 
thorough  mastery  of  his  own  meaning  and 
position  from  the  first  —  this  thorough  in- 
sight into  what  He  has  to  do,  and  the 
means  by  which  it  is  to  be  done  —  upon 
which  we  should  fix  our  thoughts  if  we 
want  to  understand,  or  to  get  any  notion  at 
all  of,  what  must  have  been  the  training  of 
those  eighteen  years. 

How  had  this  perfect  insight  and  confi- 
dence been  reached  ?  "  This  young  peas- 
ant, preaching  from  a  boat  or  on  a  hill-side 


48  THE  MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST. 

sweeps  aside  at  once  the  traditions  of  oui 
most  learned  doctors,  telling  us  that  this, 
■which  we  and  our  fathers  have  been  taught, 
is  not  what  the  God  of  Israel  intended  in 
these  commandments  of  his ;  but  that  He, 
this  young  Man,  can  tell  us  what  God  did 
really  intend.  He  assumes  to  speak  to  us 
as  one  having  authority.  Who  gave  Him 
this  authority  ?  "  These,  we  know,  are  the 
kind  of  questionings  with  which  Christ  was 
met  at  once,  and  over  and  over  again.  And 
they  are  most  natural  and  necessary  ques- 
tionings, and  must  have  occurred  to  Him- 
self again  and  again,  and  been  answered  by 
Him  to  Himself,  before  He  could  have 
stood  up  to  proclaim  with  the  tone  of  abso- 
lute authority  his  good  news  to  the  village 
congregations  in  Galilee,  or  the  ciowds  on 
the  Mount,  or  by  the  lake. 

Who  gave  thee  this  authority  ?  We  can 
only  reverentially,  and  at  a  distance,  picture 
CO  ourselves  the  discipline  and  struggles 
Dy  which  the  answer  was  reached,  which 
enabled  Him  to  go  out  without  the  slightest 


CHRIST'S  BOYHOOD.  49 

faltering  or  misgiving,  and  deliver  bis  full 
and  astounding  message,  the  moment  the 
sign  came  that  the  time  had  come,  and  that 
it  -was  indeed  He  to  whom  the  task  was 
entrusted. 

But  the  lines  of  that  discipline,  which  in 
a  measure  is  also  the  discipline  of  every  one 
of  us,  are  clearly  enough  indicated  for.  us  in 
the  story  of  the  temptation. 

In  every  subtle  form  this  question  must 
have  been  meeting  the  maturing  Christ  day 
after  day.  Art  thou  indeed  the  Son  of  God 
who  is  said  to  be  coming  to  redeem  this 
enslaved  and  degraded  people,  and  with 
and  beside  them  all  the  kingdoms  of  the 
world  ?  Even  if  these  prophets  have  not 
been  dreaming  and  doting,  art  not  Thou  at 
least  dreaming  and  doting  ?  At  any  rate 
if  that  is  your  claim  put  it  to  some  test. 
Satisfy  yourself,  and  show  us,  while  satisfy- 
ing yourself,  some  proof  of  your  title  which 
we,  too,  can  recognize.  Here  are  all  these 
material,  visible  things  which,  if  your  claim 
be  true,  must  be  subject  to  you.     Show  us 


50  THE  MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST. 

your  power  over  some  of  them  —  the  mean- 
est if  you  will,  the  common  food  which 
keeps  men  alive.  There  are  spiritual  invisi- 
ble forces  too,  which  are  supposed  to  ba 
the  ministers  of  God,  and  should  therefore 
be  under  the  control  of  his  Son  —  give  ua 
Bome  sign  that  you  can  guide  or  govern  the 
least  of  them.  Why  pause  or  delay  ?  Is 
the  burden  growing  lighter  on  this  people  ? 
Is  the  Roman  getting  year  by  year  less  in- 
solent, the  publican  less  fraudulent  and  ex- 
acting, the  Pharisees  and  rulers  less  god- 
less, the  people,  your  own  kin  amongst 
them,  less  degraded  and  less  brutal  ?  You 
are  a  grown  man,  with  the  full  powers  of  a 
man  at  any  rate.  Why  are  you  idling  here 
when  your  Father's  work  (if  God  be  your 
Father)  lies  broadcast  on  every  side,  and 
no  man  standing  forth  to  "  the  help  of  the 
Lord  against  the  mighty,"  as  our  old  seers 
used  to  rave  ? 

I  hope  I  may  have  been  able  to  indicate 
to  you,  however  imperfectly,  the  line  of 
thought  which  will  enable  each  of  you  for 


CHRIST'S  BOYHOOD.  61 

yourselves  to  follow  out  and  realize,  more  or 
less,  the  power  and  manliness  of  the  charac* 
ter  of  Christ  implied  in  this  patient  waiting 
in  obscurity  and  doubt  through  the  years 
when  most  men  are  at  full  stretch,  —  wait- 
ing for  the  call  which  shall  convince  Him 
that  the  voice  within  has  not  been  a  lying 
voice,  —  and  meantime  making  Himself  all 
that  God  meant  Him  to  be,  without  haste 
and  without  misgiving. 

In  the  time  of  preparation  for  the  battle 
of  life  this  is  the  true  touchstone.  Haste 
and  distrust  are  the  sure  signs  of  weakness, 
if  not  of  cowardice.  Just  in  so  far  as  they 
prevail  in  any  life,  even  in  the  most  heroic, 
the  man  fails,  and  his  work  will  have  to  be 
done  over  again.  In  Christ's  life  up  to  the 
age  of  thirty  there  is  not  the  slightest  trace 
of  such  weakness,  or  cowardice.  From  all 
that  we  are  told,  and  from  all  we  can  infer, 
He  made  no  haste,  and  gave  way  to  no 
doubt,  waiting  for  God's  mind,  and  pa- 
tiently preparing  Himself  for  whatever  his 
work  might   be.      And  so  his  work  from 


52  TEE  MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST. 

the  first  was  perfect,  and  through  his  whole 
public  life  He  never  faltered  or  wavered, 
never  had  to  withdraw  or  modify  a  word 
once  spoken.  And  thus  He  stands,  and 
will  stand  to  the  end  of  time,  the  true 
model  of  the  courage  and  manliness  of  boy- 
hood and  youth  arid  early  manhood. 

Before  passing  on  to  the  public  life  ot 
Christ,  there  is  one  point  which  has  been 
raised,  and  upon  which  perhaps  a  few  words 
should  be  said,  although  it  does  not  directly 
bear  upon  our  inquiry.  I  refer  to  the  su- 
pernatural power  which  all  Christians  hold 
to  have  dwelt  in  Him,  and  to  have  been 
freely  exercised  within  certain  limits^during 
his  public  career.  Was  He  always  con- 
scious of  it  ?  And,  if  so,  did  He  exercise  it 
before  his  call  and  baptism  ?  Here  we  get 
not  the  slightest  direct  help  from  the  gos- 
f.«el  narratives,  and  (as  has  been  already 
Baid)  no  reliance  whatever  can  be  placed  on 
the  apocryphal  stories  of  his  boyhood.  We 
^re  therefore  left  to  our  own  judgment  and 
reason,  and  there  must  always   be  differ 


CHRIST S  BOYHOOD.  53 

ences  between  the  conclusions  at  which  one 
man  and  another  will  arrive,  however  hon- 
estly each  may  search  for  the  truth. 

To  me,  however,  one  or  two  matters 
Beem  to  be  clear  enough.  The  first  is,  that 
He  had  only  the  same  means  as  the  rest  of 
us  of  becoming  conscious  of  his  relation- 
ship to  God.  For,  if  this  were  not  so,  He 
is  no  example  for  us,  He  was  not  "  tempted 
like  as  we  are."  Now  the  great  difference 
between  one  man  and  another  depends 
upon  how  these  means  are  used ;  and,  so 
far  as  they  are  used  according  to  the  mind 
and  will  of  God,  we  gain  mastery  over  our- 
selves and  our  surroundings.  "  As  the 
world  was  plastic  and  fluid  in  the  hands  of 
God,  so  it  is  ever  to  so  much  of  his  attri* 
butes  as  we  bring  to  it,"  may  be  a  start- 
ling saying  of  Mr.  Emerson's,  but  is  one 
which  commends  itself  to  our  experience 
and  reason,  if  we  only  consult  them  hon- 
estly. Let  us  take  the  most  obvious  exam- 
ple of  this  law.  Look  at  the  relations  of 
man  to  the  brute  creation.     One  of  us  shall 


54  THE  MANLINESS  OF  CHRIST. 

have  no  difficulty  in  making  friends  of 
beasts  and  birds,  while  another  excites  their 
dread  and  hate,  so  that  even  dogs  will 
scarcely  come  near  him.  There  is  no  need 
to  go  back  to  the  traditions  of  the  hermits 
in  the  Thebaid,  or  St.  Francis  of  Assisi, 
for  instances  of  the  former  class.  We  all 
know  the  story  of  Cowper  and  his  three 
hares  from  his  exquisite  letters  and  poem, 
and  most  of  you  must  have  read,  or  heard 
of  the  terms 'on  which  Waterton  lived  with 
the  birds  and  beasts  in  his  Yorkshire  home, 
and  of  Thoreau,  unable  to  get  rid  of  wild 
squirrels  and  birds  who  would  come  and 
live  with  him,  or  from  a  boat  taking  up 
fish,  which  lay  quietly  in  his  hand  till  he 
chose  to  put  them  back  again  into  the 
stream.  But  I  suppose  there  is  scarcely 
one  of  us  who  has  not  himself  seen  such  in- 
stances again  and  again,  persons  of  whom 
the  old  words  seemed  literally  true,  "  At 
destruction  and  famine  thou  shait  laugh ; 
neither  shalt  thou  be  afraid  of  the  beasts  of 
the   earth.     For  thou  shalt  be   in   league 


CHRIST'S  BOYHOOD.  55 

with  the  stones  of  the  field,  and  the  beasts 
of  the  field  shall  be  at  peace  with  thee." 

I  remember  myself  several  such ;  a  boy 
who  was  friends  even  with  rats,  stoats,  and 
snakes,  and  generally  had  one  or  other  of 
them  in  his  pockets ;  a  groom  upon  whose 
shoulders  the  pigeons  used  to  settle,  and 
nestle  against  his  cheeks,  whenever  he  went 
out  into  the  stable-yard  or  field.  Is  there 
any  reasonable  way  of  accounting  for  this  ? 
Only  one,  I  think,  which  is,  that  those  who 
have  this  power  over,  and  attraction  for, 
animals,  have  always  felt  towards  them  and 
treated  them  as  their  Maker  intended  — 
have  unconsciously,  perhaps,  but  still  faith- 
fully, followed  God's  mind  in  their  dealings 
with  his  creatures,  and  so  have  stood  in 
true  relations  to  them  all,  and  have  found 
the  beasts  of  the  field  at  peace  with  them. 

In  the  same  way  the  stones  of  the  field 
are  in  league  with  the  geologist,  the  trees 
and  flowers  with  the  botanist,  the  compo- 
nent parts  of  earth  and  air  with  the  chem- 
ist, just  in  so  far  as  each,  consciously  or  un- 


66  THE  MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST. 

consciously,  follows  God's  methods  with 
them  —  each  part  of  his  creation  yielding 
up  it3  secrets  and  its  treasures  to  the  open 
mind  of  the  humble  and  patient,  who  is 
also  at  bottom  always  the  most  courageous, 
learner. 

And  what  is  true  of  each  of  us  beyond 
all  question  —  what  every  man  who  walks 
with  open  eyes,  and  open  heart,  knows  to 
be  true  of  himself  —  must  be  true  also  of 
Christ.  And  so,  though  we  may  reject  the 
stories  of  the  clay  birds,  which  He  modeled 
as  a  child,  taking  wing  and  bursting  into 
song  round  Him  (as  on  a  par  with  St. 
Francis's  address  to  his  sisters  the  swallows 
at  Alvia,  or  the  flocks  in  the  Marches  of 
Venice,  who  thereupon  kept  silence  from 
their  twitterings  and  songs  till  his  sermon 
was  finished),  we  cannot  doubt  that  in  pro- 
portion as  Christ  was  more  perfectly  in 
sympathy  with  God's  creation  than  any 
tnedigeval  saint,  or  modern  naturalist,  or 
man  of  science,  He  had  more  power  than 
they  with  all  created  things  from  his  earli 


CHRIST'S  BOYHOOD.  67 

est  youth.  Nor  could  it  be  otherwise  with 
the  hearts  and  wills  of  men.  Over  these 
we  know  that,  from  that  time  to  this,  He 
has  exercised  a  supreme  sway,  infinitely 
more  wonderful  than  that  over  birds  and 
beasts,  because  of  man's  power  of  resistance 
to  the  will  Christ  came  to  teach  and  to  do, 
which  exists,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  in  no 
other  part  of  creation. 

I  think,  then,  it  is  impossible  to  resist 
the  conclusion  that  He  must  have  had  all 
these  powers  from  his  childhood,  that  they 
must  have  been  growing  stronger  from  day 
to  day,  and  He,  at  the  same  time,  more  and 
more  conscious  of  possessing  them,  not  to 
use  on  any  impulse  of  curiosity  or  self-will, 
but  only  as  the  voice  within  prompted. 
And  it  seems  the  most  convincing  testi- 
mony to  his  perfect  sonship,  manifested  in 
perfect  obedience,  that  He  should  never 
have  tested  his  powers  during  those  thirty 
years  as  He  did  at  once  and  with  perfect 
confidence  as  soon  as  the  call  came.  Had 
He  done  so  his  ministry  must  have  com 


58  THji  MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST. 

menced  sooner ;  that  is  to  say,  before  the 
method  was  matured  by  which  He  was  to 
reconstruct,  and  lift  into  a  new  atmosphere 
and  on  to  a  higher  plane,  the  faith  and  life 
of  his  own  nation  and  of  the  whole  world. 
For  it  is  impossible  to  suppose  that  the 
works  which  He  did,  and  the  words  He 
spoke,  at  thirty  —  which  at  once  threw 
all  Galilee  and  Judsea  into  a  ferment  of 
hope  and  joy  and  doubt  and  anger  — 
should  have  passed  unnoticed  had  they  been 
wrought  and  spoken  when  He  was  twenty. 
Here,  as  in  all  else.  He  waited  for  God's 
mind<£  and  so,  when  the  time  for  action 
came,  worked  with  the  power  of  God.  And 
this  waiting  and  preparation  must  have 
been  the  supreme  trial  of  his  faith.  The 
holding  this  position  must  have  been  in 
those  early  years  the  holding  of  the  very 
centre  of  the  citadel  of  Man's  soul  (as 
Bunyan  so  quaintly  terms  it),  against  w^hich 
ihe  assaults  of  the  tempter  must  have  been 
delivered  again  and  again  while  the  gar- 
rison   was    in    training    for    the    victorious 


CHRIST S  BOYHOOD.  59 

march  out  into  the  open  field  of  the  great 
world,  carrying  forth  the  standard  which 
Bhall  never  go  back. 

And  while  it  may  be  readily  admitted 
that  Christ  wielded  a  dominion  over  all 
created  things,  as  well  as  over  man,  which 
no  other  human  being  has  ever  approached, 
it  seems  to  me  to  be  going  quite  beyond 
what  can  be  proved,  or  even  fairly  assumed, 
to  speak  of  his  miracles  as  supernatural,  in 
the  sense  that  no  man  has  ever  done,  or  can 
ever  do,  the  like.  The  evidence  is  surely 
all  the  other  way,  and  seems  rather  to  indi- 
cate that  if  we  could  only  have  lived  up  to 
the  standard  which  we  acknowledge  in  our 
inmost  hearts  to  be  the  true  one,  —  could 
only  have  obeyed  every  motion  and  warning 
of  the  voice  of  God  speaking  in  our  hearts 
from  the  day  when  we  first  became  con- 
scious of  and  could  hear  it,  —  if,  in  other 
words,  our  wills  had  from  the  first  been  dis- 
ciplined, like  the  will  of  Christ,  so  as  to  be 
in  perfect  accord  with  the  will  of  God,  —  I 
see  no  reason  to  doubt  that  we,  too,  should 


60  THE  MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST. 

have  gained  the  power  and  the  courage  to 
show  signs,  or,  if  you  please,  to  work  mir- 
acles, as  Christ  and  his  Apostles  worked 
them. 


PAET  rv. 

THE   CALL  OF  CHKIST. 

*  Sound,  thou  trumpet  of  God !  come  forth,  great  cause,  to 

array  us ! 
King  and  leader,  appear!  thy  soldiers  sorrowing  seek  thee." 

A.  Clough. 

At  last  the  good  news  for  which  they 
had  been  longing  comes  to  the  expecting 
nation.  A  voice  is  heard  in  the  lonely 
tracts  beyond  Jordan  — the  route  along 
which  the  caravans  of  pilgrims  from  Gali- 
lee passed  so  often,  to  and  from  the  feasts 
at  Jerusalem  —  proclaiming  that  the  king- 
dom of  heaven  is  at  hand.  The  news  is 
soon  carried  to  the  capital,  and  from  Jeru- 
salem and  all  Judaea,  and  all  the  region 
round  about  Jordan,  the  people  go  out  to 
hear  it ;  and,  when  they  have  heard  it,  are 
baptized  in  crowds,  eagerly  claiming  each 
for  himself  a  place  in  this  kingdom.  It 
gathers   strength   till   it   moves  rulers  and 


62  THE  MANLINESS  OF  CHRIST. 

priests,  council  and  Sanhedrim,  as  well  as 
the  people  who  know  not  the  law ;  and  pres- 
ently priests  and  Levites  are  sent  out  from 
Jerusalem  to  test  messenger  and  message, 
and  ask,  "  Who  art  thou  ?  What  kingdom 
is  this  thou  art  proclaiming  without  our 
sanction  ?  "  It  spreads  northward  also, 
and  the  despised  Galileans  from  lake  shore 
and  half  pagan  cities  flock  down  to  hear  it 
for  themselves,  and  the  simplest  and  brav- 
est souls  amongst  them,  such  as  Andrew 
and  Simon  Peter,  to  attach  themselves  to 
the  preacher.  From  the  highways  and 
lake  cities  it  pierces  the  Galilean  valleys, 
and  comes  to  the  ears  of  Jesus,  in  the  car- 
penter's cottage  at  Nazareth. 

He,  too,  is  moved  by  the  call,  and  starts 
for  the  Jordan,  filled,  we  may  be  sure,  with 
the  hope  that  the  time  for  action  has  come 
at  last,  that  the  God  of  Israel  is  again 
about  to  send  deliverance  to  his  people. 
May  we  not  also  fairly  conjecture  that,  on 
his  way  to  Bethabara,  to  claim  his  place  in 
^he   national  confession   and  uprising.  He 


THE  CALL  OF  CHRIST.  63 

must  have  had  moments  of  rejoicing  that 
the  chief  part  in  the  great  drama  seemed 
likely  after  all  to  be  laid  on  another  ?  As 
a  rule,  the  more  thoroughly  disciplined  and 
fit  a  man  may  be  for  any  really  great  work, 
the  more  conscious  will  he  be  of  his  own 
unfitness  for  it,  the  more  distrustful  of  him- 
self, the  more  anxious  not  to  thrust  himself 
forward.  It  is  only  the  zeal  of  the  half -in- 
structed when  the  hour  of  a  great  deliver- 
ance has  come  at  last  —  of  those  who  have 
had  a  glimpse  of  the  glory  of  the  goal,  but 
have  never  known  or  counted  the  perils  of 
the  path  which  leads  to  it  —  which  is  ready 
with  the  prompt  response,  "  Yes  —  we  can 
drink  of  the  cup  ;  we  can  be  baptized  with 
the  baptism." 

But  in  Christ,  after  the  discipline  of 
those  long  waiting  years,  there  was  no  am- 
bition, no  self-delusion.  He  had  measured 
the  way,  and  counted  the  cost,  of  lifting  his 
own  people  and  the  world  out  of  bondage 
to  visible  things  and  false  gods,  and  bring- 
ing them  to  the  only  Father  of  their  spirits, 


64  THE  MANLINESS  OF  CHRIST. 

into  the  true  kingdom  of  their  God.  He 
must,  indeed,  have  been  well  enough  aware 
how  infinitely  more  fit  for  the  task  He 
Himself  was  than  any  of  his  own  brethren 
in  the  flesh,  with  whom  He  was  living  day 
by  day,  or  of  the  men  of  Nazareth  with 
whom  He  had  been  brought  up.  But  He 
knew  also  that  the  same  voice  which  had 
been  speaking  to  him,  the  same  wisdom 
which  had  been  training  him,  must  have 
been  speaking  to  and  training  other  humble 
and  brave  souls,  wherever  there  were  open 
hearts  and  ears,  in  the  whole  Jewish  na- 
tion. As  the  humblest  and  most  guileless 
of  men  He  could  not  have  assumed  that  no 
other  Israelite  had  been  able  to  render  that 
perfect  obedience  of  which  He  was  Himself 
conscious.  And  so  He  may  well  have  hur- 
ried to  the  Jordan  in  the  hope  of  finding 
there,  in  this  prophet  of  the  wilderness, 
"  Him  who  should  come,"  the  Messiah,  the 
great  deliverer  —  and  of  enlisting  under  his 
banner,  and  rendering  Him  true  and  loyal 
service,  in   the   belief   that,   after   all,  He 


THE  CALL  OF  CHRIST.  65 

Himself  might  only  be  intended  to  aid,  and 
hold  up  the  hands  of  a  greater  than  Him- 
self. For,  we  must  remember  that  Christ 
could  not  have  heard  before  He  came  to 
Bethabara  that  John  had  disclaimed  the 
great  title.  It  was  not  till  the  very  day 
before  his  own  arrival  that  the  Baptist  had 
told  the  questioners  from  Jerusalem,  "  I  am 
not  He." 

But  if  any  such  thought  had  crossed  his 
mind,  or  hope  filled  his  heart,  on  the  way 
to  the  Baptist,  it  was  soon  dispelled,  and 
He,  left  again  in  his  own  loneliness,  now 
more  clearly  than  ever  before,  face  to  face 
with  the  task,  before  which  even  the  Son  of 
God,  appointed  to  it  before  the  world  was, 
might  well  quail,  as  it  confronted  Him  in 
his  frail  human  body.  For  John  recognizes 
Him,  singles  Him  out  at  once,  proclaims  to 
the  bystanders,  "  This  is  He  !  Behold  the 
Lamb  of  God  !  This  is  He  who  shall  bap- 
tize with  the  fire  of  God's  own  Sptrit. 
Here  is  the  deliverer  whom  all  our  prophets 
have  foretold.     And  by  a  mysterious  out- 


66  THE  MANLINESS  OF  CHRIST. 

ward  sign,  as  well  as  by  the  witness  in  his 
own  heart  and  conscience,  Christ  is  at  once 
assured  of  the  truth  of  the  Baptist's  words 
—  that  it  is  indeed  He  Himself  and  no 
other,  and  that  his  time  has  surely  come. 

That  He  now  thoroughly  realized  the 
fact  for  the  first  time,  and  was  startled  and 
severely  tried  by  the  confirmation  of  what 
He  must  have  felt  for  years  to  be  probable, 
is  not  only  what  we  should  look  for  from 
our  own  experiences,  but  seems  the  true 
inference  from  the  gospel  narratives.  For, 
although  as  soon  as  the  full  truth  breaks 
upon  Him  He  accepts  the  mission  and  work 
to  which  God  is  calling  Him,  and  speaks 
with  authority  to  the  Baptist,  "  Suffer  it  to 
be  so  now,"  yet  the  immediate  effect  of  the 
call  is  to  drive  Him  away  into  the  wilder- 
ness, there  in  the  deepest  solitude  to  think 
over  once  again,  and  for  the  last  time  to 
wrestle  with  and  master,  the  tremendous 
disclosure.  And  the  story  of  the  tempta- 
tion which  immediately  follows  —  so  full  of 
mystery  and  difficulty  in  many  ways  —  is 


THE  CALL   OF   CHRIST.  67 

invaluable  for  the  light  which  it  casts,  not 
only  on  this  crisis  of  his  life,  bat  before  and 
after  —  on  the  history  of  the  world's  re- 
demption, and  the  method  by  which  that 
redemption  is  to  be  accomplished,  the  part 
which  each  individual  man  and  woman  is 
called  to  play  in  it. 

For  Christ's  whole  life  on  earth  was  the 
assertion  and  example  of  true  manliness  — 
the  setting  forth  in  living  act  and  word  what 
man  is  meant  to  be,  and  how  he  should 
carry  himself  in  this  world  of  God's,  —  one 
long  campaign,  in  which  "  the  temptation  " 
stands  out  as  the  first  great  battle  and  vic- 
tory. The  story  has  depths  in  it  which  we 
can  never  fathom,  but  also  clear,  sharp  les- 
sons which  he  who  runs  may  read,  and  no 
man  can  master  too  thoroughly.  We  must 
follow  Him  reverently  into  the  wilderness, 
where  He  flies  from  the  crowds  who  are 
pressing  to  the  Baptist,  and  who  to-morrow 
will  be  thronging  around  Him,  if  He  goes 
back  amongst  them,  after  what  the  Baptist 
has  said  about  Him  to-day. 


68  THE  MANLINESS  OF  CHRIST. 

Day  after  day  in  the  wilderness  the  strug- 
gle goes  on  in  his  heart.  He  is  faint  from 
insufficient  food  in  those  solitudes,  and  with 
bodily  weakness  the  doubts  grow  in  strength 
and  persistence,  and  the  tempter  is  always 
at  his  side,  soliciting  Him  to  end  them  onco 
for  all,  by  one  act  of  self-assertion.  All 
those  questionings  and  misgivings  as  to  his 
origin  and  mission  which  we  have  pictured 
to  ourselves  as  haunting  Him  ever  since  his 
first  visit  to  Jerusalem,  are  now,  as  it  were, 
focussed.  There  are  mocking  voices  whis- 
pering again  as  of  old,  but  more  scornfully 
and  keenly,  in  his  ear,  "  Are  you  really  the 
Messiah,  the  Son  of  God,  so  long  looked 
for  ?  What  more  proof  have  you  to  go  upon 
than  you  have  had  for  these  many  years, 
during  which  you  have  been  livmg  as  a  poor 
peasant  in  a  Galilean  village  ?  The  word 
vi  this  wild  man  of  the  wilderness  ?  He  is 
your  own  cousin,  and  a  powerful  preacher, 
uo  doubt,  but  a  wayward,  willful  man,  clad 
and  fed  like  a  madman,  who  has  been  nurs- 
ing mad  fancies  from  his  boyhood,  away 


THE  CALL   OF  CHRIST.  69 

from  tlie  holy  city,  the  centre  of  national 
life  and  learning.  This  sign  of  a  descend- 
ing dove,  and  a  voice  which  no  one  has 
heard  but  yourself  ?  Such  signs  come  to 
many,  —  are  never  wanting  when  men  are 
ready  to  deceive  themselves,  —  and  each 
man's  fancy  gives  them  a  different  mean- 
ing. But  the  words,  and  the  sign,  and  the 
voice,  you  say,  only  meet  a  conviction  which 
has  been  growing  these  thirty  years  in  your 
own  heart  and  conscience  ?  Well,  then,  at 
least  for  the  sake  of  others  if  not  for  your 
own  sake,  put  this  conviction  to  the  proof, 
here,  at  once,  and  make  sure  yourself,  be- 
fore you  go  forth  and  deceive  poor  men, 
your  brethren,  to  their  ruin.  You  are  fam- 
ishing here  in  the  wilderness.  This,  at 
least,  cannot  be  what  God  intends  for  his 
Son,  who  is  to  redeem  the  world.  Exercise 
Bome  control  over  the  meanest  part  of  your 
Father's  kingdom.  Command  these  stones 
♦^o  become  bread,  and  see  whether  they  will 
abey  you.  Cast  yourself  down  from  this 
height.     If  you  are  what  you  think,  your 


rO  THE  MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST. 

Father's  angels  will  bear  you  up.  Then, 
after  they  have  borne  you  up,  you  may  go 
on  with  some  reasonable  assurance  that  your 
claim  is  not  a  mere  delusion,  and  that  you 
will  not  be  leading  these  poor  men  whom 
you  call  your  brethren  to  misery  and  de- 
struction." 

And  when  neither  long  fasting  and  weak- 
ness, or  natural  doubt,  distrust,  impatience, 
or  the  most  subtle  suggestions  of  the  tempt- 
er, can  move  his  simple  trust  in  his  Father, 
or  wring  from  Him  one  act  of  self-assertion, 
the  enemy  changes  front  and  the  assault 
comes  from  another  quarter.  "  You  may  be 
right,"  the  voices  seem  now  to  be  saying ; 
"you  may  not  be  deceived,  or  dreaming, 
when  you  claim  to  be  the  Son  of  God,  sent 
lo  redeem  this  fair  world,  which  is  now 
spread  out  before  you  in  all  its  glory.  That 
may  be  your  origin,  and  that  your  work. 
But,  living  as  you  have  done  till  now  in  a 
remote  corner  of  a  despised  province,  you 
have  no  experience  or  knowledge  of  the 
methods  or  powers  which  sway  men,  and 


THE   CALL   OF  CHRIST.  71 

establish  and  maintain  these  kingdoms  of 
the  world,  the  glory  of  which  you  are  be- 
holding. These  methods  and  powers  have 
been  in  use  in  your  Father's  world,  if  it  be 
his,  ever  since  man  has  known  good  from 
evil.  You  have  only  to  say  the  word,  and 
you  may  use  and  control  these  methods  and 
powers  as  you  please.  By  their  aid  you 
may  possibly  '  see  of  the  travail  of  your 
soul  and  be  satisfied  ; '  without  them  you 
will  redeem  nothing  but  perhaps  a  man 
here  and  there  —  without  them  you  will 
postpone  instead  of  hastening  the  coming  of 
your  Father's  kingdom,  to  the  sorrow  and 
ruin  of  many  generations,  and  will  die  a 
foiled  and  lonely  man,  crushed  by  the  very 
forces  you  have  refused  to  use  for  your 
Father's  service.  If  they  were  wholly  evil, 
wholly  unfit  for  the  fulfillment  of  any  pur- 
pose of  his,  would  He  have  left  them  in 
command  of  his  world  till  this  day  ?  It  is 
only  through  them  that  the  world  can  be 
subdued.  Your  time  is  short,  and  you  have 
already  wasted  much  of  it,  standing  shiver- 


12  THE  MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST. 

ing  on  the  brink,  and  letting  the  years  slip 
by  in  that  cottage  at  Nazareth.  The  wisest 
of  your  ancestors  acknowledged  and  used 
them,  and  spread  his  kingdom  from  the 
river  to  the  Great  Sea.  Why  should  you 
reject  them  ?  " 

This,  very  roughly  and  inadequately 
stated,  is  some  shadow  of  the  utmost  part 
or  skirt,  as  it  were,  of  the  trial-crisis,  last- 
ing forty  days,  through  which  Christ  passed 
from  his  private  to  his  public  career.  For 
forty  days  the  struggle  lasted  before  He 
could  finally  realize  and  accept  his  mission 
with  all  that  it  implied.  At  the  end  of 
that  time  He  has  fairly  mastered  and  beaten 
down  every  doubt  as  to  his  call,  every 
tempting  suggestion  to  assert  Himself,  or  to 
accept  or  use  any  aid  in  establishing  his 
Father's  kingdom  which  does  not  clearly 
bear  his  Father's  stamp  and  seal  on  the 
face  of  it.  In  the  strength  of  this  victory 
He  returns  from  the  desert,  to  take  up  the 
burden  which  has  been  laid  on  Him,  and 
to  set  up  God's  kingdom   in  the  world  by 


THE  CALL  OF  CHRIST.  73 

fche  methods  which  He  has  learned  of  God 
Himself  —  and  by  no  other. 

Thus  in  following  the  life  of  Christ  up  to 
this  point,  so  far  as  we  have  any  materials, 
we  have  found  its  main  characteristic  to  be 
patience  —  a  resolute  waiting  on  God's 
mind.  I  have  asked  you  to  test  in  every 
way  you  can,  whether  this  kind  of  patience 
does  not  constitute  the  highest  ideal  we  can 
form  of  human  conduct,  is  not  in  fact  the 
noblest  type  of  true  manliness.  Pursue 
the  same  method  as  to  this  isolated  section 
of  that  life,  the  temptation,  which  I  readily 
admit  has  much  in  it  that  we  cannot  un- 
derstand. But  take  the  story  simply  as 
you  find  it  (which  is  the  only  honest 
method,  unless  you  pass  it  by  altogether, 
which  would  be  cowardly)  and  see  whether 
you  can  detect  any  weakness,  any  flaw,  in 
the  perfect  manliness  of  Christ  under  the 
strain  of  which  it  speaks  —  whether  He 
does  not  here  also  realize  for  us  the  most 
perfect  type  of  manliness  in  times  of  soli- 
tary and  critical  trial.     Spare  no  pains,  sup- 


74  THE  MANLINESS   OF    CHRIST. 

press  no  doubt,  only  be  honest  with  the 
Btory,  and  with  your  own  consciences. 

There  is  scarcely  any  life  of  first-rate  im- 
portance to  the  world  in  which  we  do  not 
find  a  crisis  corresponding  to  this,  but  the 
nearest  parallel  must  be  sought  amongst 
those  men,  the  greatest  of  their  kind,  who 
have  founded  or  recast  one  of  the  great  re- 
ligions of  the  world.  Of  these  (if  we  ex- 
cept the  greatest  of  all,  Moses)  Mohammed 
is  the  only  one  of  whose  call  we  know 
enough  to  speak.  Whatever  we  may  think 
of  him  and  the  religion  he  founded,  we 
shall  all  probably  admit  that  he  was  at  any 
rate  a  man  of  the  rarest  courage.  In  his 
case,  too,  it  is  only  at  the  end  of  long  and 
solitary  vigils  in  the  desert  that  the  vision 
comes  which  seals  him  for  his  work.  The 
silver  roll  is  unfolded  before  his  eyes,  and 
he  who  holds  it  bids  him  read  therein  the 
decrees  of  God,  and  tells  him,  "  Thou  art 
the  prophet  of  God,  and  I  his  angel." 

He  is  unmanned  by  the  vision,  and  flies 
trembling  to   his   wife,    whose  brave   and 


THE   CALL   OF  CHRIST.  ,75 

f 

loving  counsel,  and  those  of  his  friends 
and  first  disciples,  scarcely  keep  him  from 
despair  and  suicide. 

I  would  not  press  the  parallel  further 
than  to  remark  that  Christ  came  out  of  the 
temptation  with  no  human  aid,  having  trod 
the  wine-press  alone,  serene  and  resolute 
from  that  moment  for  the  work  to  which 
God  had  called  Him. 

It  remains  to  follow  his  life  in  action, 
and  to  scrutinize  its  special  characteristics 
there.  And  again  I  would  ask  you  to  sift 
every  step  thoroughly  for  yourselves,  and 
see  whether  it  will  not  bear  the  supreme 
crucial  test  from  first  to  last.  Apply  that 
test,  therefore,  without  scruple  or  limitation 
in  respect  of  this  special  quality  of  manli- 
ness, from  which  we  started  on  our  inquiry. 
I  have  admitted,  and  admit  again,  frankly 
and  at  once,  that  if  the  life  will  not  stand 
the  test  throughout,  in  every  separate  ac- 
tion and  detail,  the  Christian  hypothesis 
breaks  down.  For  we  may  make  allow- 
ances for  the  noblest  and  bravest  men,  for 


76  THE  MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST. 

Moses  and  Elijah  and  St.  Paul,  for  Soc- 
rates and  Luther  and  Mohammed,  and 
every  other  great  prophet,  but  we  can 
make  none  for  the  perfect  Son  of  man  and 
Son  of  God.  His  life  must  stand  the  test 
under  all  circumstances,  and  at  every  mo- 
ment, or  the  ground  breaks  through  under 
our  feet,  and  God  has  not  revealed  Himself 
in  man  to  men,  or  redeemed  the  world  by 
the  methods  in  which  Christendom  has  ba 
lieved  for  nineteen  hundred  years. 


PART  V. 
chbist's  ministry,  act  I. 

"  This  perfect  man,  by  merit  called  my  son, 
To  earn  salvation  for  the  sons  of  men." 

Milton,  Paradise  Regained,  Book  I. 

It  will  be  necessary  for  our  purpose  to 
follow  in  outline  the  events  of  our  Lord's 
ministry  as  a  consecutive  narrative.  If  I 
do  so  without  calling  your  attention  to  the 
endless  difficulties  and  questions  which  have 
been  fairly  raised  as  to  the  occurrence  and 
sequence  of  many  of  those  events,  it  is  not 
because  I  wish  to  ignore  them  myself,  or  to 
lead  you  away  from  the  examination  of 
them.  In  our  time,  which  is,  perhaps,  be- 
fore all  things  an  age  of  criticism,  much 
has  been  done  towards  the  creation  of  a 
science  of  history,  and  therefore  of  a  science 
of  religion,  which  is  the  highest  part  of  his- 
tory.    We  have  discovered,  or  at  any  rate 


78  TEE  MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST. 

have  done  much  to  perfect,  the  use  of  new 
and  searching  methods  of  investigation,  and 
have  applied,  and  are  applying,  these  to 
every  department  of  human  knowledge  and 
human  life. 

It  was  not  to  be  expected,  or  indeed  to 
be  wished,  that  the  new  criticism  should 
pause  before  that  history,  or  the  books  con- 
taining it,  which  our  forefathers  held  too 
sacred  to  be  looked  upon  or  treated  as  or- 
dinary history.  It  has  not  paused,  and, 
while  respecting  our  fathers'  reverent  feel- 
ing for  the  books  which  have  done  so  much 
for  our  nation  and  for  the  world,  we  may 
rejoice  that  it  has  not ;  and  that  friend  and 
foe  in  this  generation  have  been  alike  busy 
in  turning  all  the  light  which  recent  re- 
search has  placed  within  their  reach  upon 
the  story  of  our  Lord's  ministry,  and  the 
gospel  narratives  in  which  it  is  contained. 

We  English  were  in  danger  of  idolatry 
in  this  matter,  —  of  putting  the  Book  in  the 
place  of  Him  of  whom  it  testifies,  —  and  it 
U  well  for  us   that  we   have  been  shaken, 


CHBIST'S  MINISTRY.    ACT  I.  79 

however  roughly,  out  of  a  habit  which  fos- 
tered unreality  in  the  very  centre  of  our 
lives.  We  were  inclined  to  claim  for 
Christ's  religion,  and  for  its  evidences,  im- 
munities which  neither  He  nor  his  apostles 
ever  claimed.  That  position  has  been 
abandoned,  and  the  best  representatives  of 
every  school  of  religious  thought  amongst 
us  (so  far  as  I  am  aware)  now  challenge 
the  freest  inquiry,  and  lend  their  own  aid 
in  carrying  it  on.  And  amongst  the  first, 
and  not  least  formidable,  difficulties  which 
have  met  Christian  writers  has  been  that 
of  harmonizing  the  writings  of  the  four 
evangelists  so  as  to  make  the  several  nar- 
ratives fit  into  one  continuous  whole. 

Whether  it  is  possible  that  this  can  ever 
be  done  completely,  in  the  absence  of  the 
discoverv  of  new  evidence,  which  there  is 
no  reason  to  look  for,  seems  to  be  very 
doubtful.  At  any  rate  it  has  not  been  ac- 
iomplished  hitherto.  But  the  general  out- 
line comes  out  clearly  enough,  and  this  is 
all  we  need  in  order  to  pursue  our  own  par- 
ticular inquiry  satisfactorily. 


80  THE  MANLINESS  OF  CHRIST. 

Turning,  then,  to  the  point  at  wliich  we 
have  arrived,  we  shall  find  ourselves  at  once 
met  by  questions  of  detail  as  to  our  Lord's 
return  from  the  wilderness  after  his  tempta- 
tion. Whether  He  returned  to  the  scene 
of  John's  baptism,  on  the  Jordan,  and  re- 
mained there  for  some  days,  or  went 
straight  back  into  Galilee  from  the  desert , 
whether  He  commenced  his  active  ministry 
at  once,  or  even  yet  postponed  it  until 
John  had  been  put  in  prison  —  are  ques- 
tions about  which  there  is  as  yet  no  general 
concurrence  of  opinion. 

You  may  each  of  you  judge  for  your- 
selves of  the  difficulties  by  comparing  the 
passages  in  the  four  gospels  which  relate  to 
this  period. 

Taking  this  warning  with  us,  we  need 
trouble  no  further  about  the  harmonies.  In- 
deed, for  our  purpose,  they  are  of  very  little 
consequence,  for,  take  the  narrative  how  we 
will,  it  divides  itself  beyond  all  question 
into  several  distinct  and  clearly  marked 
periods.     The  first  of  these  is  that  between 


CHRIST'S  MINISTRY.    ACT  I.  81 

the  temptation  and  the  formal  opening  of 
Christ's  ministry  in  Galilee,  marked  by  his 
first  great  discourse  at  Nazareth,  the  aban- 
donment of  his  home,  and  the  selection  of 
the  five  first  Apostles  for  special  and  con- 
tinuous service.  This  first  period  extends 
at  most  over  a  few  months,  or  more  proba- 
bly weeks,  beginning  a  few  days  before  the 
feast  of  the  Passover,  and  ending  in  the 
early  summer ;  at  the  time,  not  (so  far  as  I 
am  aware)  exactly  ascertained,  when  Herod 
Antipas  seized  John  the  Baptist  and  put 
him  in  prison.  We  must  run  through  it 
shortly,  noting  the  principal  events,  and 
then  applying  our  test  to  such  of  them  as 
seem  to  come  within  the  scope  of  our  in- 
quiry. 

The  temptation  over,  Christ  appears  to 
have  returned  by  Bethabara  on  his  way  to 
his  Galilean  home.  The  crowds  were  still 
pressing  to  John's  baptism,  and  a  group 
Df  the  most  earnest  amongst  them  had  al- 
ready  gathered  round  the  Baptist,  and  were 
attaching  themselves  to  his  person,  as  the 


82  THE  MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST. 

Bons  of  the  prophets  round  Elisha,  the 
Apostles  round  Christ  Himself,  the  com- 
panions of  Medina  round  Mohammed. 

To  two  of  these  disciples  John  points  out 
Christ  as  that  Son  of  God,  of  whom  he  was 
sent  to  bear  record.  They  follow  Him, 
spend  a  few  hours  of  the  afternoon  with 
Him,  and  recognize  Him  as  the  Messiah. 
One  of  them,  Andrew,  brings  his  brother 
Simon  Peter  to  Christ.  He  Himself  calls 
Philip,  who  in  his  turn  brings  his  friend 
Nathanael.  With  these  five  Christ  starts 
for  his  home  in  Galilee. 

These  earliest  followers,  we  may  note, 
are  almost  certainly  of  the  twelve  Apostles, 
As  to  Andrew,  Simon  Peter,  and  Philip, 
who  are  expressly  named,  there  is  no  ques- 
tion ;  and  there  is  good  reason  to  believe 
that  the  companion  of  Andrew,  whose 
name  is  not  given,  was  John,  the  son  of 
Zebedee,  and  that  Nathanael  was  the 
Apostle  Bartholomew,  whose  name  is  con- 
Btantl}'^  coupled  in  the  gospels  with  that  of 
Philip.     Nathanael  was  of  Cana  of  Galilee, 


CHRIST S  MINISTRY.    ACT  I.  83 

of  what  trade  we  do  not  know ;  the  other 
four  were  of  Bethsaida,  a  suburb  of  Caper- 
naum, fishermen  on  the  Sea  of  Galilee. 

They  accompany  Christ  to  Cana,  Na- 
thanael's  home,  where  they  meet  Christ's 
mother,  and  are  present  at  the  marriage 
feast,  at  which  his  first  miracle  is  wrought. 
From  thence  they  follow  him  to  Caper- 
naum, and  some  of  them  go  on  with  Him 
to  Jerusalem  to  the  Passover,  at  which  He 
drives  out  the  cattle-dealers  from  the  outer 
court  of  the  temple,  and  overthrows  the 
tables  of  the  money-changers. 

This  act  fixes  the  attention  of  all  Jeru- 
salem upon  Him,  and  brings  Him  at  once 
under  the  notice  of  the  Sanhedrim.  One  of 
its  members,  a  Pharisee,  seeks  an  interview 
with  Him  by  night.  He  commits  Himself 
neither  to  the  mob  nor  to  the  nobleman. 
After  the  feast  He  remains  for  some  time 
in  the  northern  part  of  Judaea,  where  his 
fame  attracts  followers,  whom  his  disciples 
baptize.  He  then  passes  through  Samaria, 
ttill   attended   by   his    followers,   stopping 


84  THE  MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST. 

Bome  days  in  the  city  of  that  name,  and 
preaching  there.  They  then  go  into  Gali- 
lee, and,  while  the  disciples  apparently 
separate  for  the  time  to  their  own  homes 
and  pursuits,  He  returns  to  Nazareth,  to 
begin  his  formal  ministry  amongst  those 
who  had  known  Him  from  his  childhood. 
They  turn  upon  Him  in  the  middle  of  his 
first  discourse,  and  attempt  to  murder  Him. 
He  leaves  his  old  home  for  the  neighboring 
village  of  Cana,  where  He  is  found  by  the 
ruler  whose  son  is  sick  at  Capernaum.  He 
heals  the  child,  and  follows  the  father  to 
that  city,  where  He  hears  of  the  imprison- 
ment of  the  Baptist,  and  at  once  enters  on 
the  second  stage  of  his  public  career. 

And  now,  following  the  narrative  step 
by  step  so  far,  see  if  you  can  find  any  trace 
in  it  of  a  failure  of  courage,  even  for  a  mo- 
ment. In  the  first  place  you  will  find,  gen- 
trally,  that  there  is  no  wavering  or  hesita- 
tion at  any  point.  The  time  for  these  is 
past,  and,  the  call  once  recognized  and  ac- 
cepted   there  is  no   shrinking    or   looking 


CERIST'S  MINISTRY.    ACT  I.  85 

round,  or  going  back.  The  strain  and  bur- 
den of  a  great  message  of  deliverance  to 
men  has  again  and  again  found  the  weak 
places  in  the  faith  and  courage  of  the  most 
devoted  and  heroic  of  those  to  whom  it  has 
been  entrusted.  Moses  pleads  under  its 
pressure  that  another  may  be  sent  in  his 
place,  asking  despairingly,  "  Why  hast 
Thou  sent  me  ?  "  Elijah  prays  for  death. 
Mohammed  passes  years  of  despondency 
and  hesitation  under  the  sneers  of  those 
who  scoff,  "  There  goeth  the  son  of  Abdal- 
lah,  who  hath  his  converse  with  God !  " 
Such  shrinkings  and  doubtings  enlist  our 
sympathy,  make  us  feel  the  tie  of  a  com- 
mon humanity  which  binds  us  to  such  men. 
But  no  one,  I  suppose,  will  maintain  that 
perfect  manliness  would  not  suppress,  at 
any  rate,  the  open  expression  of  any  such 
feelings.  The  man  who  has  to  lead  a  great 
revolution  should  keep  all  misgivings  to 
himself,  and  the  weight  of  them  so  kept 
must  often  prove  the  sorest  part  of  his  bur- 
den. 


86  THE  MANLINESS    OF  CHRIST. 

But  let  us  pass  on  to  the  particular 
events  of  this  period.  As  to  many  of  them 
the  question  of  whether  they  are  courage- 
ous or  not,  perhaps  does  not  arise,  except 
in  so  far  as  it  arises  on  every  act  in  our 
lives,  each  of  which  may,  and  indeed  must, 
be  done  either  manfully  with  perfect  direct- 
ness, or  unmanfuUy  with  more  or  less  adroit- 
ness. The  man  whose  yea  is  yea  and  his 
nay  nay,  is,  we  all  confess,  the  most  cou- 
rageous, whether  or  no  he  may  be  the  most 
successful  in  daily  life.  And  He  who  gave 
the  precept  has  left  us  the  most  perfect 
example  of  how  to  live  up  to  it.  And  this 
quality  you  will  find  shines  out  at  once 
in  these  early  conversations  with  Nathan- 
ael,  Nicodemus,  and  the  woman  of  Samaria, 
as  much  as  in  the  discourses  of  his  later 
years. 

Before  considering  them  we  may  glance 
at  the  purification  of  the  temple,  an  act 
which  at  any  rate  should  satisfy  those  whc 
think  courage  best  proved  by  physical  dar- 
ing.    At  this  time,  we  must  remember,  He 


CHRIST'S  MINISTRY.    ACT  I.  87 

had  no  following,  such  as  the  crowd  that 
swept  after  him  on  Palm  Sunday,  three 
years  later,  into  the  temple  courts.  But, 
leaving  the  act  to  speak  for  itself,  look  at 
the  rare  courage  of  the  speech  by  which 
that  act  is  justified  when  it  is  challenged. 
He,  not  even  a  Levite,  a  mere  peasant  from 
a  despised  province,  had  presumed  to  exer- 
cise authority  in  the  very  temple  precincts  ! 
Jerusalem  was  full  of  worse  idolatries,  but 
the  idolatry  of  the  temple  buildings  was, 
perhaps,  the  strongest.  The  Jews  seem  to 
have  regarded  them  as  Christians  have  some- 
times regained  the  visible  Church,  or  the 
Bible  —  as  an  object  of  worship  ;  to  have 
thought  that  if  they  perished  God  Himself 
would  perish.  And  so  Christ's  answer  goes 
straight  to  the  root  of  their  idolatry.  His 
words  were  not  understood  by  the  crowd, 
or  even  by  his  own  disciples,  in  their  full 
meaning  —  that  his  body,  and  the  body  of 
every  man,  is  the  true  temple  of  God.  But 
they  understood  enough  of  them  to  see  that 
He  had  no  superstition  about  these  splendid 


88  TEE  MANLINESS  OF  CHRIST. 

buildings  of  theirs,  and  was  trying  to  lift 
them  above  local  and  national  prejudices, 
and  those  who  would  not  be  lifted  brooded 
over  them  till  theLr  day  of  vengeance  came. 

But  there  were  those  on  whom  the  daring 
acts  and  words  of  Christ  were  already  tak- 
ing hold.  Many  of  those  who  had  come  up 
to  the  Passover  believed  in  Him,  some  even 
amongst  the  rulers.  One  of  these  we  hear 
more  of  at  once. 

Nicodemus,  we  must  remember,  was  a 
leading  member  of  the  Sanhedrim,  a  repre- 
sentative of  that  section  of  the  rulers  who, 
like  the  rest  of  the  nation,  were  expecting  a 
deliverer,  a  king  who  should  prevail  against 
the  Caesar.  They  had  sent  to  the  Baptist, 
and  had  heard  of  his  testimony  to  this 
young  Galilean,  who  had  now  come  to  Je- 
rusalem, and  was  showing  signs  of  a  power 
which  they  could  not  but  acknowledge.  For, 
had  He  not  cleansed  the  temple,  which  they 
bad  never  been  able  to  do,  but,  notwith- 
standing their  pretended  reverence  for  it, 
had  allowed  to  be  turned  into  a  shambles 


CHRIST'S  MINISTRY.    ACT  I.  89 

and  an  exchange?  They  saw  that  a  part 
of  the  people  were  ready  to  gather  to  Him, 
but  that  He  had  refused  to  commit  Himself 
to  them.  This,  then,  the  best  of  them  must 
have  felt,  was  no  mere  leader  of  a  low,  fierce, 
popular  party  or  faction.  Nicodemus  at 
any  rate  was  evidently  inclined  to  doubt 
whether  He  might  not  prove  to  be  the  king 
they  were  looking  for,  as  the  Baptist  had 
declared.  The  doubt  must  be  solved,  and 
he  would  see  for  himself. 

And  so  he  comes  to  Christ,  and  hears  di- 
rectly from  Him,  that  He  has  indeed  come 
to  set  up  a  kingdom,  but  that  it  is  no  visi- 
ble kingdom  like  the  Caesar's,  but  a  king- 
dom over  men's  spirits,  one  which  rulers  as 
well  as  peasants  must  become  new  men  be- 
fore they  can  enter  —  that  a  light  has  come 
into  the  world,  and  "he  that  doeth  „ruth 
cometh  to  that  light." 

From  beginning  to  end  there  is  no  word 
to  catch  this  ruler,  or  those  he  represented ; 
no  balancing  of  phrases  or  playing  with 
plausible  religious  shibboleths,  with  which 


i 


90  TEE  MANLINESS  OF  CHRIST. 

Nicodemus  would  be  familiai',  and  whicK 
might  please,  and,  perchance,  reconcile,  this 
well-disposed  ruler,  and  the  powerful  per- 
sons he  represented.  There  is,  depend  upon 
it,  no  severer  test  of  manliness  than  our  be- 
havior to  powerful  persons,  whose  aid  would 
advance  the  cause  we  have  at  heart.  We 
know  from  the  later  records  that  the  inter- 
view of  that  night,  and  the  strange  words 
he  had  heard  at  it,  made  a  deep  impression 
on  this  ruler.  His  manliness,  however, 
breaks  down  for  the  present.  He  shrinks 
back  and  disappears,  leaving  the  strange 
young  peasant  to  go  on  his  way. 

The  same  splendid  directness  and  incisive- 
ness  characterize  his  teaching  at  Samaria. 
There,  again.  He  attacks  at  once  the  most 
cherished  local  traditions,  showing  that  the 
place  of  worship  matters  nothing,  the  ob- 
ject of  worship  everything.  That  object  is 
a  Father  of  men's  spirits,  who  wills  that  all 
men  shall  know  and  worship  Him,  but  who 
can  only  be  worshipped  in  spirit  and  in 
trutli.     He,  the  peasant  who  is  talking  to 


CHRIST'S  MINISTRY.    ACT  I.  91 

them,  is  Himself  the  Messiah,  who  has  come 
from  this  Fathei-  of  them  and  Him,  to  give 
them  this  spirit  of  truth  in  their  own  hearts. 

The  Jews  at  Jerusalem  had  been  clamor- 
ing round  Him  for  signs  of  his  claim  to 
speak  such  words,  and  in  the  next  few  days 
his  own  people  would  be  crying  out  for  his 
blood  when  they  heard  them.  These  Sa- 
maritans make  no  such  demand,  but  hear 
and  recognize  the  message  and  the  messen- 
ger. The  seed  is  sown,  and  He  passes  on, 
never  to  return  and  garner  the  harvest; 
deliberately  preferring  the  hard,  priest-rid- 
den lake  cities  of  the  Jews  as  the  centre  of 
his  ministry.  He  will  leave  ripe  fields  for 
others  to  reap.  This  decision,  interpret  it 
as  we  will,  is  that  of  no  soft  or  timid  re 
former.  Take  this  test  again  and  compare 
Christ's  choice  of  his  first  field  for  work 
with  that  of  any  other  great  leader  of  men. 

This  first  period  fitly  closes  with  the 
ftcene  at  Nazareth.  Here  He  returns,  while 
the  reports  of  his  doings  at  the  feast  at 
Jerusalem  are  fresh  in  the    minds   of  his 


92  THE   MANLINESS  OF  CHRIST. 

family  and  fellow-townsmen.    They  are  ex- 
cited and  divided  as  to  Him  and   his  do- 
ings.    A  thousand  reasons  would  occur  for 
speaking  soft  things,  at  such  a  moment,  for 
accommodating  His  teaching,  here  at  any 
rate,  to  the  wants  and  tastes  of  his  hearers, 
so  as  to  keep  a  safe  and  friendly  asylum  at 
Nazareth,  amongst   the  scenes  and  people 
He  had  loved  from  childhood.     It  is  clear 
that  some  of  his  family,  if  not  his  mother 
herself,  were  already  seriously  alarmed  and 
displeased.     They  disliked  what  they  had 
heard  of  His  teaching  at  Jerusalem  and  on 
His  way  home,  which  they  felt  must  bring 
Him  to  ruin,  in  which  they  might  be  in- 
volved.    He  must  have  seen  and  conversed 
with   them   in   his   own  home  before  that 
icene  in  the  synagogue,  and  have  had  then 
to  endure  the  bitter  pain  of  alienating  those 
whom    He   loved   and   respected,  and   had 
reason  to  love  and  respect,  but  who  could 
not   for   the   time  rise  out  of  the   conven- 
tional, respectable  way  of  looking  at  things. 
To   stand  by  what   our   conscience  wit- 


CHRIST S  MINISTRY.    ACT  I.  93 

nesses  for  as  truth,  through  evil  and  good 
report,  even  against  all  opposition  of  those 
we  love,  and»of  those  whose  judgment  we 
look  up  to  and  should  ordinarily  prefer  to 
follow  ;  to  cut  ourselves  deliberately  off 
from  their  love  and  sympathy  and  respect , 
is  surely,  I  repeat,  one  of  the  most  severe 
trials  to  which  we  can  be  put.  A  man  has 
need  to  feel  at  such  times  that  the  Spirit  of 
the  Lord  is  upon  him  in  some  measure,  as 
it  was  upon  Christ  when  He  rose  in  the 
synagogue  of  Nazareth  and,  selecting  the 
passage  of  Isaiah  which  speaks  most  di- 
rectly of  the  Messiah,  claimed  that  title  for 
Himself,  and  told  them  that  to-day  this 
prophecy  was  fulfilled  in  Him. 

The  fierce,  hard,  Jewish  spirit  is  at  once 
roused  to  fury.  They  would  kill  Him  then 
and  there,  and  so  settle  his  claims,  once 
for  all.  He  passes  through  them,  and  away 
from  the  quiet  home  where  He  had  been 
brought  up  —  alone,  it  would  seem,  so  far 
as  man  could  make  Him  so,  and  homeless 
for  the  remainder  of  his   life.      Yet  not 


94  THE  MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST. 

alone,  for  his  Father  is  with  Him ;  nor 
homeless,  for  He  has  the  only  home  of 
which  man  can  be  sure,  the  home  of  his 
own  heart  shared  with  the  Spirit  of  God. 


PART  VI. 

cheist's  ministey.    act  n. 

"  What  is  it  that  ye  came  to  note  ? 
A  young  man  preaching  from  a  boat." 

A.  Clough. 

The  second  period  of  our  Lord's  minis- 
try is  one,  in  tlie  main,  of  joyful  progress 
and  triumph,  in  which  the  test  of  true  man- 
liness must  be  more  subtle  than  when  the 
surroundings  are  hostile.  It  consists,  I 
think,  at  such  times  in  the  careful  watch- 
fulness not  to  give  wrong  impressions,  not 
to  mislead  those  who  are  touched  by  en- 
thusiasm, conscious  of  new  life,  grateful  to 
Him  who  has  kindled  that  life  in  them. 

It  is  then  that  the  temptation  to  be  all 
things  to  all  men  in  a  wrong  sense  —  to 
adapt  and  accommodate  teaching  and  life 
to  a  lower  standard  in  order  to  maintain  a 
hold  upon  the  masses  of  average  men  and 
women  who  have  been  moved  by  the  words 


96  THE  MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST. 

of  lips  touched  by  fire  from  the  altar  of 
God,  —  has  generally  proved  too  much  for 
the  best  and  strongest  of  the  world's  great 
reformers.  It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  labor 
this  point,  which  would,  I  think,  be  sorrow- 
fully admitted  by  those  who  have  studied 
most  lovingly  and  carefuUy  the  lives  of 
Buch  men,  for  instance,  as  Savonarola  or 
Wesley.  If  you  will  refer  to  a  recent  and 
valuable  work  on  the  life  of  a  greater 
than  either  of  these,  Mr.  Bosworth  Smith's 
*'  Mohammed  and  Mohammedanism,"  you 
will  find  there  perhaps  the  best  illustration 
which  I  can  give  you  of  this  sad  experience. 
When  Mohammed  returns  from  Medina, 
sweeping  at  last  all  enemies  out  of  his  path, 
as  the  prophet  of  a  new  faith,  and  the 
leader  of  an  awakened  and  repentant  peo- 
ple, his  biographer  pauses  to  notice  the 
lowering  of  the  standard,  both  in  his  life 
and  teaching.  Power,  he  pleads,  bi'ings 
with  it  new  temptations  and  new  failures. 
The  more  thoroughly  a  man  is  carried  away 
by  his  inspiration,  and   convinced  of   the 


CHRIST'S  MINISTRY.    ACT  II.  97 

truth  and  goodness  of  bis  cause  and  his 
message,  the  more  likely  is  he  to  forget  the 
means  in  the  end,  and  to  allow  the  end  to 
justify  whatever  means  seem  to  lead  to  its 
triumph.  He  must  maintain  as  he  can,  and 
by  any  means,  his  power  over  the  motley 
mass  of  followers  that  his  mission  has 
gathered  round  him,  and  will  be  apt  to  aim 
rather  at  what  will  hold  them  than  at  what 
will  satisfy  the  highest  promptings  of  hia 
own  conscience. 

We  may  allow  the  plea  in  such  cases, 
though  with  sorrow  and  humiliation.  But 
the  more  minutely  we  examine  the  life  of 
Christ  the  more  we  shall  feel  that  here, 
again,  there  is  no  place  for  it.  We  shall 
be  impressed  with  the  entire  absence  of  any 
such  bending  to  expediency,  or  forgetting 
the  means  in  the  end.  He  never  for  one 
moment  accommodates  his  life  or  teaching 
to  any  standard  but  the  highest :  never 
\owers  or  relaxes  that  standard  by  a  shade 
sr  a  hair's-breadth,  to  make  the  road  easy 
to  rich  or  powerful  questioners,  or  to  uphold 


98  THE  MANLINESS  OF  CHRIST. 

the  spirit  of  his  poorer  followers  when  they 
are  startled  and  uneasy,  as  they  begin  half- 
blindly  to  recognize  what  spirit  they  are  of. 
This  unbending  truthfulness  is,  then,  what 
we  have  chiefly  to  look  for  in  this  period  of 
triumphant  progress  and  success,  question- 
ing each  act  and  word  in  turn  whether 
there  is  any  swerving  in  it  from  the  highest 
ideal. 

It  is  not  easy  to  mark  off  distinctly  the 
time  over  which  it  extends,  but  it  seems  to 
me  to  commence  with  his  return  to  Caper- 
naum, after  the  healing  of  the  centurion's 
son,  when  He  hears  of  the  imprisonment 
of  John,  and  to  end  with  the  estrangement 
of  many  of  his  followers  at  his  teaching  as 
to  the  bread -of  life,  and  the  nearly  con- 
temporaneous and  final  and  open  rupture 
with,  and  defiance  of,  the  chief  priests  and 
Bcribes  and  Pharisees,  when  they  change 
from  suspicious  and  watchful  critics  into 
open  and  avowed  enemies,  baffled  for  the 
moment,  but  dogging  his  footsteps  and 
thirsting  for  his  blood. 


CHRIST S  MINISTRY.    ACT  II.  99 

It  is  upon  his  relations  with  these  scribes 
and  Pharisees  more  particularly  that  we 
must  keep  our  attention  fixed,  as  it  is  here, 
if  anywhere,  that  we  may  look  for  a  failure 
of  nerve  and  truthfulness,  and  therefore  of 
manliness. 

We  must  gather  our  connected  view  of 
this  period  from  all  the  narratives,  and  shall 
find  the  beginning  most  clearly  indicated  in 
St.  Matthew,  in  the  last  part  of  the  fourth 
chapter,  where  He  recalls  to  his  side  Peter 
and  Andrew  and  the  sons  of  Zebedee  — 
who  appear  to  have  left  Him  for  the  mo- 
ment and  to  have  returned  to  their  boats 
and  nets  at  Bethsaida  —  and  opens  hig 
ministry  in  the  lake  cities  by  the  Sermon 
on  the  Mount.  For  the  end  we  must  go  to 
the  eleventh  chapter  of  St.  Luke,  where,  in 
the  house  of  a  Pharisee,  He  speaks  the 
words  which  madden  Pharisees  and  lawyers 
into  urging  Him  vehemently  to  speak  of 
many  things,  and  watching  for  the  words 
which  will  enable  them  to  entangle,  and,  as 
they  think,  to  destroy  Him. 


100  THE  MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST. 

First,  then,  as  to  the  main  facts  so  far  as 
they  are  necessary  for  our  purposes.  "We 
may  note  that  our  Lord  accepts  at  once  the 
imprisonment  of  the  Baptist  as  the  final 
summons  to  Himself.  Gathering,  there- 
fore, a  few  of  John's  disciples  round  him, 
and  welcoming  the  restless  inquiring  crowds 
who  had  been  roused  by  the  voice  crying  in 
the  wilderness.  He  stands  forward  at  once 
to  proclaim  and  explain  the  nature  of  that 
new  kingdom  of  God,  which  has  now  to  be 
set  up  in  the  world.  Standing  forth  alone, 
on  the  open  hill-side,  the  young  Galilean 
peasant  gives  forth  the  great  proclamation, 
which  by  one  effort  lifted  mankind  on  to 
that  new  and  higher  ground  on  which  it 
has  been  painfully  struggling  ever  since, 
but  on  the  whole  with  sure  though  slow 
success,  to  plant  itself  and  maintain  sure 
foothold. 

In  aU  history  there  is  no  parallel  to  it. 
It  stands  there,  a  miracle  or  sign  of  God's 
leign  in  this  world,  far  more  wonderful 
than  any  of  Christ's   miracles   of  healing 


•  CHRIST'S  MINISTRY.    ACT  II.  101 

Unbelievers  have  been  sneering  at  and  ridi- 
culing it,  and  Christian  doctors  paring  and 
explaining  it  away  ever  since.  But  there 
it  stands,  as  strong  and  fresh  as  ever,  the 
calm  declaration  and  witness  of  what  man- 
kind is  intended  by  God  to  become  on  this 
earth  of  his. 

As  a  question  of  courageous  utterance 
(with  which  we  are  here  mainly  con- 
cerned), I  would  only  ask  you  to  read  it 
through  once  more,  bearing  in  mind  who 
the  preacher  was  —  a  peasant,  already  re- 
pudiated by  his  own  neighbors  and  kinsfolk, 
and  suspected  by  the  national  rulers  and 
teachers ;  and  who  were  the  hearers  —  a 
motley  crowd  of  Jewish  peasants  and  fisher- 
men, Romish  legionaries,  traders  from  Da- 
mascus, Tyre,  and  Sidon,  and  the  distant 
isles  of  Greece,  with  a  large  sprinkling  of 
publicans,  scribes,  Pharisees,  and  lawyers. 

The  immediate  result  of  the  sermon  was 
to  bow  the  hearts  of  this  crowd  for  the  time, 
10  that  He  was  able  to  choose  followers 
Crom  amongst   them,  much   as  He  would* 


102  TEE  MANLINESS  OF  CHRIST. 

He  takes  fishermen  and  peasants,  selecting 
only  two  at  most  from  any  rank  above  the 
lowest,  and  one  of  these  from  a  class  more 
hated  and  despised  by  the  Jews  than  the 
poorest  peasant,  the  publicans.  It  is  plain 
that  He  might  at  first  have  called  apostles 
from  amongst  the  upper  classes  had  He 
desired  it  —  as  a  teacher  with  any  want  of 
courage  would  surely  have  done.  But  the 
only  scribe  who  offers  himself  is  rejected. 

The  calling  of  the  Apostles  is  followed 
by  a  succession  of  discourses  and  miracles, 
which  move  the  people  more  and  more, 
until,  after  that  of  the  loaves,  the  popular 
enthusiasm  rises  to  the  point  it  had  so  often 
reached  in  the  case  of  other  preachers  and 
leaders  of  this  strange  people.  They  are 
ready  to  take  him  by  force  and  make  him  a 
king. 

The  Apostles  apparently  encourage  this 
enthusiasm,  for  which  He  constrains  them 
into  a  ship,  and  sends  them  away  before 
Him.  After  rejoining  them  and  rebuking 
their  want  of  understanding  and  faith,  He 


CHRISra  MINISTRY.    ACT  II.  103 

returns  with  them  to  the  multitudes,  and 
at  once  speaks  of  Himself  as  the  bread 
from  heaven,  in  the  discourse  which  offends 
many  of  his  disciples,  who  from  this  time 
go  back  and  walk  no  more  with  him.  The 
brief  season  of  triumphant  progress  is  draw- 
ing to  an  end,  during  which  He  could  re- 
joice in  spirit  in  contemplating  the  human 
harvest  which  He  and  his  disciples  seem  to 
be  already  successfully  garnering. 

But,  even  while  the  prospect  was  fairest, 
while  the  people  were  surging  round  Him 
in  the  first  enthusiasm  of  their  new  faith, 
there  had  been  ominous  signs  of  that  an- 
tasonism  of  the  rulers  which  was  to  end  on 
Calvary,  and  we  have  now  to  glance  at  the 
relations  of  Christ  with  them  during  this 
same  period. 

This  antagonism  was  of  gradual  growth. 
In  the  first  instance  many  of  the  scribes 
and  Pharisees  seem  to  have  followed  Him, 
more  for  the  purpose  of  hearing  and  watch- 
ing, than  in  a  spirit  of  direct  hostility.  In 
ihe  Sermon  on  the  Mount  He  only  once  al- 


104  THE 'MANLINESS  OF  CHRIST. 

ludes  to  them  directly,  wlien  He  tells  hk 
hearers  that  unless  their  righteousness  ex- 
ceeds that  of  the  scribes  and  Pharisees 
there  can  be  no  place  for  them  in  this  king- 
dom of  which  He  is  now  proclaiming  the 
laws.  It  does  not  appear,  however,  at  first 
that  they  were  alienated  by  what  was  then 
said,  for  soon  afterwards  we  find  Pharisees 
and  doctors  of  the  law  from  Jerusalem 
"  and  every  town  of  Galilee  and  Judaea  " 
sitting  by  while  He  teaches,  "  and  the 
power  of  the  Lord  was  present  to  heal 
them." 

Now,  however,  they  are  aroused  and 
startled  by  Christ's  address  to  the  palsied 
man  —  "  Thy  sins  are  forgiven  thee." 
The  cure  of  the  man  silences  them  for  the 
moment.  They  are  filled  with  fear,  and 
glorify  God,  saying,  "  We  have  seen 
strange  things  to-day."  But  Christ's  next 
act  again  rouses  their  jealousy  afresh. 
He  has  not  called  any  of  them  to  his  side ; 
that,  probably,  they  would  have  deemed 
presumption.    They  are  waiting  and  watch 


CHRIST'S  MINISTRY.    ACT  II.  105 

ing  ;  thinking,  doubtless,  that  their  pres- 
ence gives  a  sanction  and  respectability  to 
the  young  teacher,  which  He,  and  the 
crowds  who  come  to  hear  and  be  healed, 
will  in  due  course  learn  to  appreciate. 
Meantime  it  might  restrain  Him  and  them 
from  rash  acts  and  words,  which  would 
ruin  a  national^  movement  that  might  possi- 
bly be  hereafter  guided  to  the  advantage 
of  Israel. 

But  now,  while  the  great  men  are  thus 
balancing,  and  probably  admiring  them- 
selves for  their  liberality,  Christ  singles 
out  Levi  the  publican,  calls  him  as  an  Apos- 
tle, and  goes  to  his  house  to  feast  with  a 
large  company  of  other  publicans.  The 
great  people  remonstrate  angrily.  Such  an 
act  outrages  all  their  notions  of  the  ortho- 
dox conduct  of  a  prophet.  Christ  replies, 
simply,  that  He  has  come  to  call  sinners, 
not  the  righteous,  to  repentance. 

A  few  days  later  an  even  more  serious 
question  is  raised  between  them.  On  a 
Sabbath  day  his  disciples  pluck  and  eat  the 


106  THE  MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST. 

corn,  and  Christ  justifies  tliem.  On  the 
next  Sabbath,  while  they  are  "watching  Him, 
He  heals  a  man,  with  the  obvious  purpose 
of  trying  them,  and  claims  to  be  Lord  of 
the  Sabbath  as  He  had  claimed  power  to 
forgive  sins.  They  begin  to  be  filled  with 
madness,  and  commune  what  they  can  do  to 
Him. 

Still,  however,  the  breach  is  not  final. 
They  have  not  abandoned  the  hope  of  using 
the  young  preacher  and  prophet  for  their 
purposes.  So  Simon,  one  of  their  number 
invites  Him  to  his  house,  and,  though  neg- 
lecting the  usual  courtesies  of  an  enter- 
tainer (as  out  of  place  in  the  case  of  a  peas- 
ant), is  evidently  not  treacherous  in  the  in- 
vitation. He  might  well  flatter  himself  on 
his  freedom  from  class  prejudices,  and  feel 
that  such  condescension  would  have  a  good 
effect  on  his  guest,  and  might  lead  Him  in 
good  time  to  rely  on  and  consult  persons 
moving  in  the  upper  ranks  of  Jewish  society 
as  to  his  future  course. 

The  story  of  the  woman,  a  sinner,  who 


; 


CERISTS  MINISTRY.    ACT  II.  107 

gets  into  the  room  and  anoints  Christ's 
feet,  and  the  use  which  He  makes  of  the 
incident  —  to  bring  home  to  Simon's  mind, 
with  the  most  exquisite  temper  and  court- 
esy, but  with  the  most  faithful  firmness, 
his  shortcomings  as  a  host,  and  his  want  of 
true  insight  as  a  man  —  are  amongst  the 
finest  illustrations  we  have  of  his  method 
with  the  great  and  powerful  of  his  nation. 
Before  leaving  the  house  He  once  more  re- 
asserts his  power  to  forgive  sins. 

We  must  now  follow  Him  to  Jerusalem, 
to  which  He  goes  up  to  one  of  the  feasts, 
and,  at  the  headquarters  of  the  scribes  and 
Pharisees,  deliberately  raises  afresh  the 
burning  questions  which  He  had  left  rank- 
ling in  the  minds  of  the  provincial  hier- 
archy. He  heals  the  impotent  man  at  the 
pool  of  Bethesda  on  the  Sabbath  day,  and 
sends  him  through  the  streets  carrying  his 
bed.  Challenged  to  defend  Himself  (prob- 
ably before  the  Sanhedrim),  He  claims, 
more  explicitly  than  ever  before,  that  God 
is  his  Father,  and  has  given  Him  not  only 


108  THE  MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST. 

power  to  do  mighty  works,  but  "  author- 
ity to  execute  judgment ;  "  that  their  own 
Scriptures  testify  of  Him  as  He  who  can 
give  them  life  if  they  will  come  to  Him  for 
it.  Upon  which  they,  naturally  enough, 
seek  to  slay  Him ;  but  He  gets  back  un- 
scathed to  Galilee,  and  then  follows  the 
scene  which  I  have  referred  to  as  the  end 
of  this  period  of  his  ministry. 

The  Pharisees  are  now  dogging  his  foot- 
steps wherever  He  goes,  but  even  yet  have 
not  given  up  the  hope  of  coming  to  some 
terms  with  One  whom  they  cannot  help  ac- 
knowledging to  wield  a  power  over  the  peo- 
ple which  has  slipped  away  from  them- 
selves. Influenced  possibly,  by  a  discourse 
in  which  He  upbraids  the  people  as  an  evil 
generation,  without  specially  alluding,  as  was 
so  often  his  custom,  to  the  people's  leaders 
and  teachers  as  those  upon  whom  the  chief 
guilt  rested,  they  again  invite  Him  into 
their  own  circle.  But  now  the  time  is  past 
for  the  kindly  courtesy  of  the  feast  in  Si- 
mon's house.     The  usual  means  of  washing 


CHBTST'S  MINISTRY.    ACT  II.  109 

before  meat  are  there,  but  He  rejects  them. 
They  express  a  well-bred  astonishment,  and 
then  follows  that  scathing  denunciation  of 
their  hypocrisies  and  tyrannies,  of  their 
"  inward  parts  full  of  ravening  wickedness," 
which  makes  the  breach  final  and  irrevoca- 
ble between  the  Son  of  Man  and  the  rulers 
of  Israel. 

Thenceforth  Christ  has  more  and  more  to 
"  tread  the  wine  press  alone,"  surrounded 
by  bewildered  followers,  and  powerful  ene- 
mies resolved  on  his  destruction,  and  un- 
Bcrupulous  as  to  the  means  by  which  it 
must  be  compassed. 


PAET  VII. 
Christ's  mikistey.    act  in. 

**  By  the  light  of  burning  martyr  fires  Christ's  bleeding  feet 
I  track, 
Toiling  up  new  Calvaries  ever  with  the  cross  that  turns 
not  back."  Lowell. 

We  have  now  reached  the  critical  point, 
the  third  act  in  the  world's  greatest  drama. 
All  chance  of  the  speedy  triumph  of  the 
kingdom  of  God,  humanly  speaking,  in  this 
lake  country  of  Galilee,  —  the  battle-field 
chosen  by  Himself,  where  his  mightiest 
works  had  been  done  and  his  mightiest 
words  spoken,  —  the  district  from  which 
his  chosen  companions  came,  and  in  which 
clamorous  crowds  had  been  ready  to  declare 
Him  king,  —  is  now  over.  The  conviction 
that  this  is  so,  that  He  is  a  baffled  leader, 
in  hourly  danger  of  his  life,  has  forced  it- 
self on  Christ.  Before  entering  that  bat- 
tle-field, face  to  face  with   the  tempter  in 


CHRIST'S  MINISTRY.    ACT  III.         HI 

the  wilderness,  He  had  deliberately  rejected 
all  aid  from  the  powers  and  kingdoms  of 
this  world,  and  now,  for  the  moment,  the 
powers  of  this  world  have  proved  too  strong 
for  Him. 

The  rulers  of  that  people  —  Pharisee, 
Sadducee,  and  Herodian,  scribe  and  lawyer 
—  were  now  marshaled  against  Him  in  one 
compact  phalanx,  throughout  all  the  coasts 
of  Galilee,  as  well  as  in  JudaBa. 

His  disciples,  rough,  most  of  them  peas- 
ants, full  of  patriotism  but  with  small  power 
of  insight  or  self-control,  were  melting 
away  from  a  leader  who,  while  He  refused 
them  active  service  under  a  patriot  chief  at 
open  war  with  Caesar  and  his  legions,  be- 
wildered them  by  assuming  titles  and  talk- 
ing to  them  in  language  which  they  could 
not  understand.  They  were  longing  for  one 
who  would  rally  them  against  the  Roman 
oppressor,  and  give  them  a  chance,  at  any 
rate,  of  winning  their  own  land  again, 
purged  of  the  heathen  and  free  from  tribute. 
Such  an  one  would  be  worth  following  to 


112  THE  MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST. 

the  death.  But  what  could  they  make  of 
this  "  Son  of  Man,"  who  would  prove  hia 
title  to  that  name  by  giving  his  body  and 
pouring  out  his  blood  for  the  life  of  man  — 
of  this  "  Son  of  God,"  who  spoke  of  re- 
deeming mankind  and  exalting  mankind  to 
God's  right  hand,  instead  of  exalting  the 
Jew  to  the  head  of  mankind  ? 

In  the  face  of  such  a  state  of  things  to 
remain  in  Capernaum,  or  the  neighboring 
towns  and  villages,  would  have  been  to 
court  death,  there,  and  at  once.  The  truly 
courageous  man,  you  may  remind  me,  is  not 
turned  from  his  path  by  the  fear  of  death, 
which  is  the  supreme  test  and  touchstone  of 
his  courage.  True  ;  —  nor  was  Christ  so 
turned,  even  for  a  moment. 

Whatever  may  have  been  his  hopes  in 
the  earlier  part  of  his  career,  by  this  time 
He  had  no  longer  a  thought  that  mankind 
could  be  redeemed  without  his  own  perfect 
and  absolute  sacrifice  and  humiliation.  The 
cup  would  indeed  have  to  be  drunk  to  the 
dregs,  but  not  here,  nor  now.     This  must 


CHRIST'S  MINISTRY.    ACT  III.  113 

be  done  at  Jerusalem,  the  centre  of  the 
national  life  and  the  seat  of  the  Roman 
government.  It  must  be  done  during  the 
Passover,  the  national  commemoration  of 
sacrifice  and  deliverance.  And  so  He  with- 
draws, with  a  handful  of  disciples,  and  even 
they  still  wayward,  half-hearted,  doubting, 
from  the  constant  stress  of  a  battle  which 
has  turned  against  Him.  From  this  time 
He  keeps  away  from  the  great  centres  of 
population,  except  when,  on  two  occasions 
—  at  the  Feast  of  Tabernacles  and  the 
Feast  of  the  Dedication  —  He  flashes  for  a 
day  on  Jerusalem",  and  then  disappears 
again  into  some  haunt  of  outlaws,  or  of 
wild  beasts.  This  portion  of  his  life  com- 
prises something  less  than  the  last  twelve 
months,  from  the  summer  of  the  second 
year  of  his  ministry  till  the  eve  of  the  last 
Passover,  at  Easter,  in  the  third  year. 

In  glancing  at  the  main  facts  of  this  pe- 
riod, as  we  have  done  in  the  former  ones, 
we  have  to  note  chiefly  his  intercourse  with 

the  twelve  Apostles,  and  his  preparation  oi 
8 


114  TEE  MANLINESS  OF  CHRIST. 

them  for  the  end  of  his  own  career  and  the 
beginning  of  theirs  ;  his  conduct  at  Jerusa- 
lem during  those  two  autumnal  and  winter 
feasts ;  and  the  occasions  when  He  again 
comes  into  collision  with  the  rulers  and 
Pharisees,  both  at  these  feasts  and  in  the 
intervals  between  therri. 

The  keynote  of  it,  in  spite  of  certain 
short  and  beautiful  interludes,  appears  to 
me  to  be  a  sense  of  loneliness  and  oppres- 
sion, caused  by  the  feeling  that  He  has 
work  to  do,  and  words  to  speak,  which 
those  for  whom  they  are  to  be  done  and 
spoken,  and  whom  they  are,  first  of  all 
men,  to  bless,  will  either  misunderstand  or 
abhor.  Here  is  all  the  visible  result  of  his 
labor,  and  of  his  travail,  and  the  enemy  is 
gathering  strength  every  day. 

This  becomes  clear,  I  think,  at  once, 
when,  in  the  first  days  after  his  quitting  the 
fake  shores.  He  asks  his  disciples  the  ques- 
tion, "  Whom  do  the  world,  and  whom  do 
ye,  say  that  I  am  ?  "  He  is  answered  by 
Peter   in   the   well-known  burst  of  enthu 


CHRIST'S  MINISTRY.    ACT  III.         115 

giasm,  that,  though  the  people  only  look  on 
Him  as  a  prophet,  such  as  Elijah  or  Jere- 
miah, his  own  chosen  followers  see  in  Him 
"  the  Christ,  the  Son  of  the  living  God." 

It  is  this  particular  moment  which  He 
selects  for  telling  them  distinctly,  that 
Christ  will  not  triumph  as  they  regard  tri- 
umphing ;  that  He  will  fall  into  the  power 
of  his  enemies,  and  be  humbled  and  slain 
by  them.  At  once  the  proof  comes  of  how 
little  even  the  best  of  his  own  most  inti- 
mate friends  had  caught  the  spirit  of  his 
teaching  or  of  his  kingdom.  The  announce- 
ment of  his  humiliation  and  death,  which 
none  but  the  most  truthful  and  courageous 
of  men  would  have  made  at  such  a  moment, 
leaves  them  almost  as  much  bewildered  as 
the  crowds  in  the  lake  cities  had  been  a  few 
days  before. 

Their  hearts  are  faithful  and  simple,  and 
upon  them,  as  Peter  has  testified,  the  truth 
has  flashed  once  for  all,  that  there  can  be 
no  other  Saviour  of  men  than  this  Man 
with  whom  they  are  living.     Still,  by  what 


116  THE  MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST. 

means  and  to  what  end  the  salvation  sliall 
come,  they  are  scarcely  less  ignorant  than 
the  people  who  had  been  in  vain  seeking 
from  Him  a  sign  such  as  they  desired.  His 
own  elect  "  understood  not  his  saying,  and 
it  was  hid  from  them,  that  they  perceived 
it  not."  Rather,  indeed,  they  go  straight 
from  that  teaching  to  dispute  amongst  them- 
selves who  of  them  shall  be  the  greatest 
in  that  kingdom  which  they  understand  so 
little.  And  so  their  Master  has  to  begin 
again  at  the  beginning  of  his  teaching,  and, 
placing  a  little  child  amongst  them,  to  de- 
clare that  not  of  such  men  as  they  deem 
themselves,  but  of  such  as  this  child,  is  the 
kingdom  of  heaven. 

The  episode  of  the  Transfiguration  fol- 
lows ;  and  immediately  after  it,  as  though 
purposely  to  warn  even  the  three  chosen 
friends  who  had  been  present  against  new 
delusions,  He  repeats  again  the  teaching 
as  to  his  death  and  humiliation.  And  He  re- 
iterates it  whenever  any  exhibition  of  power 
or  wisdom  seems  likely  to  encourage  the 


CHRIST S  MINISTRY.    ACT  III.         117 

frame  of  mind  in  the  twelve  generally  which 
had  lately  brought  the  great  rebuke  on 
Peter.  How  slowly  it  did  its  work,  even 
with  the  foremost  disciples,  there  are  but 
too  many  proofs. 

Amongst  his  kinsfolk  and  the  people 
generally,  his  mission,  thanks  to  the  cabals 
of  the  rulers  and  elders,  had  come  by  this 
time  to  be  looked  upon  with  deep  distrust 
and  impatience.  "  How  long  dost  Thou 
make  us  to  doubt  ?  Go  up  to  this  coming 
feast,  and  there  prove  your  title  before 
those  who  know  how  to  judge  in  such  mat- 
ters," is  the  querulous  cry  of  the  former  as 
the  Feast  of  Tabernacles  approaches.  He 
does  not  go  up  publicly  with  the  caravan, 
which  would  have  been  at  this  time  need- 
lessly to  incur  danger,  but,  when  the  feast 
iS  half  over,  suddenly  appears  in  the  tem- 
ple. There  He  again  openly  affronts  the 
rulers  by  justifying  his  former  acts,  and 
teaching  and  proclaiming  that  He  who  has 
6ent  Him  is  true,  and  is  their  God. 

It  is  evidently  on  account   of  this   new 


118  THE    MANLINESS   OF  CIIRIST. 

proof  of  daring  tliat  the  people  now  again 
begin  to  rally  round  him.  "  Behold,  He 
Bpeaketh  boldly.  Do  our  rulers  know  that 
this  is  Christ  ?  "  is  the  talk  which  fills  the 
air,  and  induces  the  scribes  and  Pharisees, 
for  the  first  time,  to  attempt  his  arrest  by 
their  officers. 

The  officers  return  without  Him,  and 
their  masters  are,  for  the  moment,  power- 
less before  the  simple  word  of  Him  who,  as 
their  own  servants  testify,  "  speaks  as  never 
man  spake."  But  if  they  cannot  arrest  and 
execute,  they  may  entangle  Him  further, 
and  prepare  for  their  day,  which  is  surely 
and  swiftly  coming.  So  they  bring  to  Him 
the  woman  taken  in  adultery,  and  draw 
from  Him  the  discourse  in  which  He  tells 
them  that  the  truth  will  make  them  free  — 
the  truth  which  He  has  come  to  tell  them, 
but  which  they  will  not  hear,  because  they 
are  of  their  father  the  devil.  He  ends  with 
asserting  his  claim  to  the  name  which  every 
Jew  held  sacred,  "  before  Abraham  was,  I 
ftm."     The   narrative   of   the  seventh  and 


CHRIST'S  MINISTRY.    ACT  III.  119 

eighth  chapters  of  St.  John,  which  record 
these  scenes  at  the  Feast  of  Tabernacles, 
have,  I  believe,  done  more  to  make  men 
courageous  and  truly  manly,  than  all  the 
stirring  accounts  of  bold  deeds  which  ever 
were  written  elsewhere. 

The  report  of  what  had  happened  at  the 
Feast  of  Tabernacles  seems  to  have  re- 
kindled  for  a  moment  the  fitful  zeal  of  the 
people  of  Galilee.  Christ  does  not,  how- 
ever, avail  Himself  of  this  reaction  until 
the  time  comes  for  another  return  to  Jeru- 
salem to  the  Feast  of  Dedication,  when, 
probably  in  the  month  of  November  or  early 
in  December,  He  returns  once  more  to  Ca- 
pernaum, to  prepare  for  his  last  journey. 
The  Pharisees,  impotent  themselves  for  the 
moment,  now  hurry  to  warn  Him  that 
Herod  is  seeking  to  kill  Him  ;  but  He 
passes  on  his  way  with  perfect  indifference. 

The  crowds  seem,  as  of  old,  inclined  to 
gather  round  Him  again.  He  selects  sev- 
enty from  amongst  them,  and  sends  them 
on  to  prepare  his  route,  following  Himself, 


120  THE  MANLINESS  OF  CHRIST. 

and,  this  time,  it  being  his  last  pilgrimage, 
with  the  multitude. 

And  now,  again,  in  the  first  days  of  this 
progress,  the  most  trusted  of  the  Apostles 
show  how  little,  even  yet,  they  understand 
their  Lord,  or  their  own  work.  When  they 
see  their  Master  once  more  at  the  head  of 
a  throng  of  followers  the  old  spirit  comes 
back  on  them  as  strongly  as  ever,  and  they 
are  anxious  to  call  down  fire  from  heaven 
to  consume  those  who  will  not  receive  Him. 
His  rebuke  and  warning,  yet  again,  pass  by 
them,  and  get  no  hold  on  them.  Rather, 
the  incidents  of  the  journey  impress  them 
more  and  more  with  the  belief  that,  at  last, 
the  kingdom  is  coming  with  power.  At 
ength,  at  some  point  in  the  progress,  they 
are  amazed,  and  as  they  follow  are  afraid. 
Once  more  Christ  takes  them  aside,  and 
endeavors  to  dispel  their  dreams,  repeat- 
ing to  them,  in  painful  detail,  what  will 
happen  to  Himself  at  Jerusalem  at  the 
end  of  this  journey ;  that  He  will  be  be- 
trayed, delivered  to  the  Gentiles,  mocked 


CHRIST'S  MINISTRY.    ACT  III.  l2l 

scourged,  spat  upon,  crucified.  In  spite  of 
this  warning,  and  while  it  is  yet  ringing  in 
their  ears,  we  find  James  and  John  asking 
for  the  places  of  honor  in  the  kingdom  of 
their  own  imaginations  I 

At  the  feast  He  is  met  by  the  Pharisees 
and  scribes  in  a  somewhat  different  temper 
from  that  which  they  had  shown  at  the  end 
of  his  last  visit.  For  He  is  once  again  at 
the  head  of  a  vast  and  eager  multitude. 
They  know  that  some,  even  of  their  own 
number,  are  inclined  to  believe  in  Him. 
They  appeal  to  Him,  passionately,  to  say 
who  He  is.  He  replies  by  referring  to  his 
former  teaching  about  his  Father,  whom 
they  claimed  as  their  God,  adding,  "  I  and 
my  Father  are  one." 

Such  a  reply  He  well  knew  could  only 
have  one  result.  He  was  alone  ;  and  in  the 
ears  of  those  who  surrounded  Him  He  was 
speaking  blasphemy,  which  could  only  be 
expiated  by  instant  death.  Yet  He  neither 
hesitates  nor  temporizes,  but,  when  they 
«eize  stones  to  inflict   the   penalty,   meets 


122  THE  MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST. 

them  with  a  bearing  so  calm  and  manly 
that  they  can  no  more  cast  the  first  stone  at 
Him  than  they  could  three  months  before 
at  the  woman  taken  in  adultery. 

He  leaves  Jerusalem  once  more  after  the 
feast,  going  across  Jordan  with  his  Apostles 
to  the  country  where  John  came  preaching 
and  baptizing,  and  remains  there  preaching 
to  those  who  come  to  Him,  until  the  news 
of  Lazarus's  death  takes  Him  for  a  few  days 
to  Bethany.  After  the  raising  of  his  friend 
He  returns  to  Perasa  again,  and  leaves 
it  only  when  the  great  caravan  is  passing  by 
on  its  way  to  the  Passover,  in  the  early 
spring.  He  joins  the  caravan  with  his  dis- 
ciples, passing  with  it  through  Jericho,  the 
city  of  priests,  and  selecting  there  the  pub- 
lican Zacchffius  as  his  host, — a  last  lesson, 
by  example,  of  the  kind  of  material  which 
will  be  used  in  building  up  his  kingdom. 

On  the  first  day  of  the  feast  He  rides  into 
Jerusalem  in  apparent  triumph,  the  city 
mob  joining  the  pilgrim  mob  in  greeting 
Him  with  loud  Hosannas.     Once  more  He 


CHRIST S  MINISTRY.    ACT  III.  123 

cleanses  the  temple,  and  rouses  the  covet- 
ousness  of  the  money-changers  into  active 
alliance  with  the  bigotry  of  the  priests,  and 
the  wild  anger  and  jealousy  of  the  rulers, 
to  sweep  this  terrible  Galilean  revolutionist 
from  the  face  of  the  earth,  before  He  shall 
ruin  them  all. 

For  two  days  He  continues  to  meet  them 
in  the  temple  and  public  resorts  of  the  city, 
shaming,  confuting,  and  denouncing  them, 
and  widening  hour  by  hour  that  breach 
which  was  already  gaping  wide  between 
the  nation  and  city  and  their  true  Lord  and 
King.  The  last  scene  in  the  temple,  re- 
corded in  John,  brings  the  long  struggle  to 
a  close. 

The  more  carefully  you  study  this  long 
wrestle  with  the  blind  leaders  of  a  doomed 
nation,  which  has  now  come  to  an  end,  the 
more  you  will  recognize  the  perfect  truth- 
fulness and  therefore  the  perfect  courage, 
which  marks  Christ's  conduct  of  it.  From 
beginning  to  end  there  is  no  word  or  act 
which   can    mislead   friend    or   foe.      The 


124  THE  MANLINESS  OF    CHRIST. 

strife,  though  for  life  and  death,  has  left  no 
trace  or  stain  on  his  nature.  Fresh  from 
the  last  and  final  conflict  in  the  temple 
court.  He  can  pause  on  the  side  of  Olivet  to 
weep  over  the  city,  the  sight  of  which  can 
still  wring  from  Him  the  pathetic  yearnings 
of  a  soul  purified  from  all  taint  of  bitter- 
ness. 

It  is  this  most  tender  and  sensitive  of 
the  sous  of  men  —  with  fibres  answering  to 
every  touch  and  breath  of  human  sympathy 
or  human  hate  —  who  has  borne  with  abso- 
lutely unshaken  steadfastness  the  distrust 
and  anger  of  kinsfolk,  the  ingratitude  of 
converts,  the  blindness  of  disciples,  the  fit« 
ful  and  purblind  worship,  and  hatred,  and 
fear,  of  the  nation  of  the  Jews.  So  far,  we 
can  estimate  to  some  extent  the  burden 
and  the  strain,  and  realize  the  strength  and 
beauty  of  the  spirit  which  could  bear  it  all. 
Beyond  and  behind  lie  depths  into  which 
we  can  but  glance.  For  in  those  last  hours 
Df  his  life  on  earth  the  question  was  to  be 


CHRIST'S  MINISTRY.    ACT  III.         125 

decided  whether  we  men  have  in  deed  and 
in  truth  a  brotherhood,  in  a  Son  of  Man, 
the  head  of  humanity,  who  has  united  man- 
kind to  their  Father,  and  can  enable  them 
to  know  Him. 


PART  vra. 

THE  LAST  ACT. 

"  Thou  seem'st  both  human  and  divine ; 
The  highest,  holiest  manhood  Thou  I  " 

Tenntsoh. 

We  liave  reached  the  last  stage,  which  is 
also  the  most  critical  one,  of  our  inquiry. 
It  is  upon  the  accounts  which  we  have  of 
Christ^s  agony  that  the  scarnful  denials  of 
his  manliness  mainly  rest.  How,  it  is 
asked,  can  you  Christians  recognize  as  per- 
fect man,  as  the  head  and  representative  of 
humanity,  one  who  showed  such  signs  of 
physical  fear  and  weakness  as  Christ,  by 
your  own  confession,  showed  in  the  garden 
of  Gethsemane  ?  Even  without  going  to 
the  roll  of  saints  and  martyrs,  hundreds  of 
men  and  women  can  be  named  who  have 
looked  a  cruel  death  in  the  face  without 
flinching,  and  endured  tortures  at  least  as 


THE  LAST  ACT.  127 

painful  as  his  with  a  constancy  which  was 
wanting  in  Him. 

It  was,  indeed,  a  speech  of  this  kind,  in 
which  the  death  of  the  Abolitionist  leader, 
John  Brown,  was  contrasted  with  that  of 
Christ,  as  one  so  far  superior  in  manliness 
that  it  ought  to  be  enough  of  itself  to 
shame  Christians  out  of  their  superstition, 
which  confirmed  me  in  proposing  this  in- 
quiry to  you,  as  the  most  necessary  and 
useful  one  we  could  engage  in. 

Now  I  freely  admit  that  there  is  no  re- 
corded end  of  a  life  that  I  know  of  more 
entirely  brave  and  manly  than  this  one  of 
Captain  John  Brown,  of  which  we  know 
every  minutest  detail,  as  it  happened  in  the 
full  glare  of  our  modern  life  not  twenty 
years  ago.  About  that  I  think  there  would 
scarcely  be  disagreement  anywhere.  The 
very  men  who  allowed  him  to  lie  in  his 
bloody  clothes  till  the  day  of  his  execu- 
tion, and  then  hanged  him,  recognized  this. 
"You  are  a  game  man,  Captain  Brown," 
the  Southern   sheriff    said  in    the   wagon. 


128  THE  MANLINESS  OF  CHRIST. 

"  Yes,"  he  answered,  "  I  was  so  brought  up. 
It  was  one  of  my  mother's  lessons.  From 
infancy  I  have  not  suffered  from  physical 
fear.  I  have  suffered  a  thousand  times 
more  from  bashfulness ; "  and  then  he 
kissed  a  negro  child  in  its  mother's  arms, 
and  walked  cheerfully  on  to  the  scaffold, 
thankful  that  he  was  "  allowed  to  die  for  a 
cause,  and  not  merely  to  pay  the  debt  of 
nature,  as  all  must." 

There  is  no  simpler  or  nobler  record  in 
the  "Book  of  Martyrs,"  and  in  passing  I 
would  only  remind  you,  that  he  at  least  was 
ready  to  acknowledge  from  whence  came  his 
strength.  "  Christ,  the  great  Captain  of  lib- 
erty as  well  as  of  salvation,"  he  wrote  just 
before  his  deatli,  "  saw  fit  to  take  from  me 
the  sword  of  steel  after  I  had  carried  it  for 
a  time.  But  He  has  put  another  in  my 
hand,  the  sword  of  the  Spirit,  and  I  pray 
God  to  make  me  a  faithful  soldier  wher- 
ever He  may  send  me."  And  to  a  friend 
who  left  him  with  the  words,  "  If  you  can 
be  true  to  yourself  to  the  end  how  glad  we 


THE  LAST  ACT.  129 

shall  be,"  he  answered,  "  I  cannot  say,  but 
I  do  not  think  I  shall  deny  my  Lord  and 
Master,  Jesus  Christ."  The  old  Abolition- 
ist would  have  been  as  amazed  as  any  man 
at  such  a  compai'ison  as  we  are  dealing 
with,  and  would  have  reminded  us  that,  so 
far  from  treading  the  wine-press  alone,  he 
was  upheld  -by  the  sympathy  and  enthusi- 
asm of  all  of  his  own  nation,  and  of  the 
world  outside  his  own  nation,  for  whom  he 
cared. 

No  such  support  had  Christ.  He  knew 
too  well  that  even  the  strongest  of  the  little 
band  which  came  with  Him  to  the  garden 
would  deny  Him  before  the  light  dawned 
over  Olivet.  And  that  sense  of  utter  lone- 
liness it  was,  more  probably  than  all  the 
rest  of  the  burden  which  He  was  carrying, 
that  wrung  from  Him  the  prayer  of  agony, 
recalled  almost  before  it  was  uttered,  that 
the  cup  might  pass  from  Him,  and  caused 
the  sweat  as  it  were  great  drops  of  blood  to 
fall  from  his  brow  as  He  knelt  and  prayed. 

How   the   tradition   of  that   agony   and 


130  THE  MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST. 

bloody  sweat  has  come  to  us  is  hard  to  say, 
as  the  nearest  witnesses  were  asleep ;  but 
no  Christian  doubts  that  it  is  a  true  one,  or 
that  the  passion  of  human  weakness  which 
then  passed  over  his  soul  was  a  genuine 
shrinking  from  the  unutterable  anguish 
which  was  weighing  it  down  to  the  dust. 

But  even  admitting  frankly  all  that  is 
recorded  of  the  agony  and  bloody  sweat, 
Buch  admission  can  only  enhance  the  sub- 
lime courage  of  all  that  follows.  It  is  his 
action  when  the  danger  comes,  not  when 
he  is  in  solitary  preparation  for  it,  which 
marks  the  man  of  courage. 

Let  us  just  glance  at  this  action.  As 
Judas  with  his  torchmen  draws  near  He 
gathers  Himself  together,  rouses  his  sleepy 
followers,  and  meets  his  enemy  in  the  gate. 
There  could  have  been  no  quailing  in  the 
glance  before  which  the  armed  crowd  of 
priests'  retainers  went  backward  and  fell  to 
the  ground. 

Follow  Him  through  that  long  night :  to 
bhe  Sanhedrim  chamber,  whei-e  He  Himself 


TEE  LAST  ACT.  131 

furnishes  the  evidence  which  the  chief  priest 
Bought  for  in  vain  while  He  was  silent  —  to 
the  court  of  the  palace,  where  He  bore  the 
ribaldry  and  dastard  tortures  and  insults  of 
the  low  Jewish  crowd  till  morning,  turning 
in  the  midst  of  them  with  the  reminding 
look  to  Peter,  which  sent  his  last  friend, 
broken  down  by  the  consciousness  of  his 
own  cowardice,  weeping  into  the  night  —  to 
the  judgment-seat  of  Pilate,  and  the  scourg- 
ings  of  the  Roman  soldiers  —  to  Herod's 
hall  and  the  insults  of  the  base  Galilean 
court  —  back  again  to  the  judgment-seat  of 
the  representative  of  the  divine  Tiberius, 
and  so  to  the  final  brutalities  in  the  prseto- 
rium  while  the  cross  is  preparing,  and  the 
blood  which  is  dripping  from  the  crown  of 
thorns  on  his  brow  mingles  with  that  which 
ilows  from  the  wounds  of  his  scourgings  — 
and  find,  if  you  can,  one  momentary  sign 
of  terror  or  of  weakness. 

In  all  the  world's  annals  there  is  nothing 
which  approaches,  in  the  sublimity  of  its 
courage,    that    last    conversation    between 


132  THE  MANLINESS   OF  CHRIST. 

the  peasant  prisoner,  by  this  time  a  mass  of 
filth  and  blood,  and  the  Roman  procurator, 
before  Pilate  led  Him  forth  for  the  last  time 
and  pleaded  scornfully  with  his  nation  for 
the  life  of  their  King.  The  canon  from 
which  we  started  must  guide  us  to  the  end. 
There  must  be  no  flaw  or  spot  on  Christ's 
courage,  any  more  than  on  his  wisdom  and 
tenderness  and  sympathy.  And  for  the  last 
time  I  repeat,  the  more  unflinchingly  we 
apply  the  test,  the  more  clear  and  sure  will 
the  response  come  back  to  us. 

We  have  been  told  recently,  by  more 
than  one  of  those  who  profess  to  have 
weighed  and  measured  Christianity  and 
found  it  wanting,  that  religion  must  rest  on 
leason,  based  on  phenomena  of  this  visible, 
tangible  world  in  which  we  are  living. 

Be  it  so.  There  is  no  need  for  a  Chris- 
tian to  object.  He  can  meet  this  challenge 
as  well  as  any  other.  We  need  never  be 
careful  about  choosing  our  own  battle-field. 
Looking,  then,  at  that  world  as  we  see  it, 
laboring   heavily  along  in   our   own    time 


THE  LAST  ACT.  133 

—  as  we  Lear  of  it  througii  the  records  of 
the  ages  —  I  must  repeat  that  there  is  no 
phenomenon  in  it  comparable  for  a  moment 
to  this  of  Christ's  life  and  work.  The  more 
we  canvass  and  sift  and  weigh  and  balance 
the  materials,  the  more  clearly  and  grandly 
does  his  figure  rise  before  us,  as  the  true 
Head  of  humanity,  the  perfect  Ideal,  not 
only  of  wisdom  and  tenderness  and  love, 
but  of  courage  also,  because  He  was  and 
is  the  simple  Truth  of  God  —  the  expres- 
sion, at  last,  in  flesh  and  blood,  of  what  He 
who  created  us  means  each  one  of  our  race 
to  be. 

We  have  now  finished  our  endeavor  to 
look  at  the  life  of  Christ  from  one  point  of 
view,  and  in  special  connection  with  one 
human  quality.  I  trust  it  may  prove  to  be 
only  the  first  step  for  many  of  you  in  a 
study  which  will  last  your  lives.  At  any 
rate  it  is  one  which  the  reverence  which  is 
felt  by  every  member  of  this  College  for 
our  founder  ought  to  commend  to  us  above 
\11  others. 


134  THE  MANLINESS  OF  CHRIST. 

He,  as  you  all  know,  was  never  weary  of 
impressing  on  us,  term  after  term,  year  af- 
ter year,  that  the  aim  of  this  place  is  to 
make  good  citizens,  and  that  this  can  only 
be  done  by  keeping  vividly  before  ourselves, 
in  all  our  work  here,  that  common  human- 
ity which  binds  us  all  together  by  the  ties 
of  family,  of  neighborhood,  of  country. 
What  that  common  humanity  means  and 
implies,  he  taught  us,  can  only  be  under- 
stood by  reference  to  a  Son  of  Man,  and 
Son  of  God,  in  whom  we  have  all  a  common 
interest,  through  whom  we  have  all  a  com- 
mon spiritual  relationship  to  his  and  our 
Father. 

To  bring  this  home  to  us  all,  as  the  cen- 
tral truth  of  our  own  lives,  as  the  master- 
key  of  the  confusions  and  perplexities  in  our 
own  hearts  and  in  the  world  around  us, 
was  the  crowning  work  of  his  life,  and  I 
trust  we  have  been  true  to  his  principle  and 
his  method  in  our  attempt  to  realize  the 
life  of  this  Son  of  Man,  and  Son  of  God 
on  this  earth,  which  is  so  mysteriously  at 


TEE  LAST  ACT.  135 

strife  with  the  will  of  its  Creator  and  Re- 
deemer. 

Into  the  heart  of  the  mystery  of  that 
strife  the  wisest  and  best  of  us  cannot  pene- 
trate, but  the  wayfaring  man  cannot  help 
seeing  that  it  is  precisely  around  this  life 
of  the  Son  of  Man  and  Son  of  God  that 
the  fiercest  controversies  of  our  time  are 
raging.  Is  it  not  also  becoming  clearer 
every  day  that  they  will  continue  to  rage 
more  and  more  fiercely  —  that  there  can  be 
no  rest  or  peace  possible  for  mankind  — 
until  all  things  are  subdued  to  Him,  and 
brought  into  hai'mony  with  his  life  ? 

It  is  to  this  work  that  all  churches  and 
sects.  Catholic  and  Protestant,  that  all  the 
leading  nations  of  the  world,  known  collec- 
tively as  Christendom,  are  pledged :  and 
the  time  for  redeeming  that  pledge  is  run- 
.ling  out  rapidly,  as  the  distress  and  per- 
plexity, the  threatening  disruption  and  an- 
archy, of  Christendom  too  clearly  show.  It 
is  to  this  work  too  that  you  and  I,  every 
man  and  woman  of  us,  are  also  called  ;  and 


136  THE  MANLINESS  OF  CHRIST. 

if  we  would  go  about  it  with  any  hope  and 
courage,  it  can  only  be  by  keeping  the  life 
of  Christ  vividly  before  us  day  by  day,  and 
turning  to  it  as  to  a  fountain  in  the  desert, 
as  to  the  shadow  of  a  great  rock  in  a  weary 
land. 

From  behind  the  shadow  the  still  small 
voice  —  more  awful  than  tempest  or  earth 
quake  —  more  sure  and  persistent  than  day 
and  night  —  is  always  sounding,  full  of 
hope  and  strength  to  the  weariest  of  us  all, 
"Be  of  good  cheer,  I  have  overcome  the 
world." 

TLopeuav  koX  (tv  ttolov  ofioua^. 


CONCLUSION.! 

A.N    ADDRESS,    DELIVERED     AT     CLIFTON     COL- 
LEGE,   SUNDAY    EVENING,    OCTOBER,    1879. 

"They  crowd  upon  us  in  this  shade, 
The  youth  who  own  the  coming  years  — 
Be  never  God  or  land  betrayed 
By  any  son  our  Harvard  rears." 

The  Rev.  R.  Loweu- 

What  is  it  in  such  societies  as  yours  that  gives 
them  so  strong  a  hold  on,  so  unique  an  attrac- 
tion for,  those  who  have  been  for  years  engaged 
in  the  rough  work  of  life  ?  That  the  fact  is  so 
I  think  no  one  will  deny,  explain  it  how  they 
will.  I  at  least  cannot  remember  to  have  met 
with  any  man  who  will  not  own  that  a  visit  to 
one  of  our  great  schools  moves  and  touches  him 
on  a  side  of  his  nature  which  for  the  most  part 
lies  quiet,  almost  dormant,  but  which  he  feels  it 
is  good  for  him  should  be  stirred.  He  may  go 
back  to  his  work  without  an  effort  to  explain  to 
himself  why  these  unwonted  sensations  have  vis- 
ited him,  but  not  without  a  consciousness  that  he 
has  had  a  change  of  air  which  has  done  him  good 
1  Printed  by  request.  —  T.  H. 


138  CONCLUSION. 

' — that  he  has  been  in  a  bracing  atmosphere,  like 
that  at  the  top  of  some  high  mountain  pass, 
where  the  morning  sun  strikes  earlier  and  more 
brightly  than  in  the  valleys  where  bis  daily  task 
must  be  done. 

To  him  who  cares  to  pursue  the  inquiry,  I 
think  the  conviction  will  come,  that  to  a  stranger 
there  is  something  at  once  inspiring  and  pathetic 
in  such  societies  as  this,  standing  apart  as  they 
do  from,  and  yet  so  intimately  connected  with, 
the  great  outside  world. 

Inspiring,  because  he  finds  himself  once  again 
amongst  these  before  whom  the  golden  gates  of 
active  life  are  about  to  open,  for  good  or  evil 
—  each  one  of  whom  holds  in  his  hands  the  keys 
of  those  gates,  the  keys  of  light  or  of  darkness, 
amongst  whom  faith  is  strong,  hope  bright,  and 
ideals,  untainted  as  yet  by  the  world's  slow  stain, 
Btill  count  for  a  great  power. 

Pathetic,  because  he  knows  but  too  well  how 
hard  the  path  is  to  find,  how  steep  to  climb,  on 
the  further  side  of  those  golden  gates  —  how 
often  in  the  journey  since  he  himself  passed 
out  from  under  them,  his  own  faith  and  hope 
have  burned  dimly,  and  his  ideal  has  faded  away 
as  he  toiled  on,  or  sat  by  the  wayside,  looking 


CONCLUSION.  139 

Iv^istfully  after  it ;  till  in  the  dust  and  jar,  the 
heat  and  strain  of  the  mighty  highway,  he  has 
been  again  and  again  tempted  to  doubt  whether 
it  was  indeed  anything  more  than  a  phantom  ex- 
halation, which  had  taken  shape  in  the  glorious 
morning  light,  only  to  vanish  when  the  work- 
day sun  had  risen  fairly  above  the  horizon,  and 
dispersed  the  colored  mists. 

He  may  well  be  pardoned  if,  at  such  times, 
the  remembrance  of  the  actual  world  in  which  he 
is  living,  and  of  the  generation  which  moved  into 
line  on  the  great  battle-field  when  he  himself 
shouldered  musket  and  knapsack,  and  passed  into 
action  out  of  the  golden  gates,  should  for  a  mo- 
ment or  two  bring  the  pathetic  side  of  the  picture 
into  strongest  relief.  "  Where  are  they  now 
who  represented  genius,  valor,  self-sacrifice,  the 
invisible  heavenly  world  to  these?  Are  they 
dead  ?  Has  the  high  ideal  died  out  of  them  ? 
Will  it  be  better  with  the  new  generation  ?  "  ^ 

Such  thoughts,  such  doubts,  will  force  them- 
selves at  times  on  us  all,  to  be  met  as  best  we 
may.  Happy  the  man  who  is  able,  not  at  all 
times  and  in  all  places,  but  on  the  whole,  to  hold 
them  resolutely  at  arm's  length,  and  to  follow 
1  Emerson. 


140  CONCLUSION. 

straight  on,  though  often  wearily  and  painfully, 
in  the  tracks  of  the  divine  visitor  who  stood  by 
his  side  in  his  youth,  though  sadly  conscious  of 
weary  lengths  of  way,  of  gulfs  and  chasms, 
which  since  those  days  have  come  to  stretch  and 
yawn  between  him  and  his  ideal  —  of  the  differ- 
ence between  the  man  God  meant  him  to  be  — 
of  the  manhood  he  thought  he  saw  so  clearly  in 
those  early  days  —  and  the  man  he  and  the  world 
have  together  managed  to  make  of  him. 

I  say,  happy  is  that  man.  I  had  almost  said 
that  no  other  than  he  is  happy  in  any  true  or 
noble  sense,  even  in  this  hard  materialist  nine- 
teenth century,  when  the  faith,  that  the  weak 
must  to  the  wall,  that  the  strong  alone  are  to 
survive,  prevails  as  it  never  did  before  —  which 
on  the  surface  seems  specially  to  be  organized 
for  the  destruction  of  ideals  and  the  quenching 
of  enthusiasms.  I  feel  deeply  the  responsibility 
of  making  any  assertion  on  so  moot  a  point  to 
"uch  an  audience  in  such  a  place  as  this ;  never- 
theless, even  in  our  materialist  age,  I  must  urge 
you  all,  as  you  would  do  good  work  in  the 
world,  to  take  your  stand  resolutely  and  once 
for  all,  at  school  and  all  your  lives  through,  on 
the  side  of  the  idealists. 


CONCLUSION.  141 

In  doing  so  I  trust  and  believe  I  shall  not  be 
running  counter  to  the  teaching  you  are  accus- 
tomed to  hear  in  this  place.  I  know  that  I  should 
be  running  counter  to  it  if  anything  I  may  say 
were  to  give  the  least  encouragement  to  dreami- 
ness or  dawdling.  Let  me  say,  then,  at  once  and 
emphatically,  that  nothing  can  be  farther  from 
my  wish  or  thought.  The  only  idealism  I  plead 
for  is  not  only  compatible  with  sustained  and 
vigorous  work :  it  cannot  be  maintained  with- 
out it. 

The  gospel  of  work  is  a  true  gospel  though 
not  the  only  one,  or  the  highest,  and  has  been 
preached  in  our  day  by  great  teachers.  And  I  do 
not  deny  that  the  advice  I  have  just  been  giving 
you  may  seem  at  first  sight  to  conflict  with  the 
work-gospel.  Listen,  for  instance,  to  the  ring  of 
it  in  the  rugged  and  incisive  words  of  one  of  our 
strongest  poets :  — 

"  That  low  man  seeks  a  little  thing  to  do, 

Sees  it  and  does  it. 
This  high  man,  with  a  great  thing  to  pursue, 

Dies  ere  he  knows  it. 
That  low  man  goes  on  adding  one  to  one, 

His  hundreds  soon  hit. 
This  high  man  aiming  at  a  million, 

Misses  a  nnit." 


142  CONCLUSION. 

This  sounds  like  a  deliberate  attack  on  the  ideal- 
ist, a  direct  preference  of  low  to  high  aims  and 
standards,  of  the  seen  to  the  unseen.  It  is  in 
reality  only  a  wholesome  warning  against  aim- 
ing at  any  ideal  by  wrong  methods,  though  the 
use  of  the  words  "  low  "  and  "  high  "  is  no  doubt 
likely  to  mislead.  The  true  idealist  has  no 
quarrel  with  the  lesson  of  these  lines  ;  indeed, 
he  would  be  glad  to  see  them  written  on  one  of 
the  door-posts  of  every  great  school,  if  only  they 
were  ballasted  on  the  other  by  George  Her- 
bert's quaint  and  deeper  wisdom. 

"  Pitch  thy  behavior  low,  thy  projects  high, 
So  shalt  thou  humble  and  magnanimous  be. 
Sink  not  in  spirit  :   who  aimeth  at  the  sky, 
Shoots  higher  much  than  he  that  means  a  tree." 

Both  sayings  are  true,  and  worth  carrying  in 
your  minds  as  part  of  their  permanent  furniture, 
and  you  will  find  that  they  will  live  there  very 
peaceably  side  by  side. 

There  is  in  truth  no  real  antagonism  between 
them.  The  seeming  paradox,  like  so  many 
others,  disappears  in  the  working  world.  In  the 
stress  of  the  great  battle  of  life  it  will  trouble  no 
soldier  who  keeps  a  single  eye  in  his  head  and 


CONCLUSION.  143 

a  sound  heart  in  his  bosom.  For  he  who  has 
the  clearest  and  intensest  vision  of  what  is  at 
issue  in  that  battle,  and  who  quits  himself  in  it 
most  manfully,  will  be  the  first  to  acknowledge 
that  for  him  there  has  been  no  approach  to  vic- 
tory except  by  the  faithful  doing  day  by  day 
of  the  work  which  lay  at  his  own  threshold. 

On  the  other  hand  the  universal  experience  of 
mankind  —  the  dreary  confession  of  those  who 
have  merely  sought  a  "  low  thing,"  and  "  gone 
on  adding  one  to  one  ; "  making  that  the  aim 
and  object  of  their  lives  —  unite  in  warning  us 
that  on  these  lines  no  true  victory  can  be  had, 
either  for  the  man  himself  or  for  the  cause  he 
was  sent  into  the  world  to  maintain. 

No,  there  is  no  victory  possible  for  boy  or 
man  without  humility  and  magnanimity  ;  and  no 
numility  or  magnanimity  possible  without  an 
ideal.  I  have  been  pleading  with  you  boys  to 
take  sides  with  the  idealists  at  once  and  through 
life.  I  have  told  you  unless  you  do  so  you  can 
neither  be  truly  humble  nor  truly  magnanimous. 
You  may  reply,  "  Well,  that  advice  may  be  good 
or  bad,  we  cannot  tell,  until  you  tell  us  how  we 
*re  to  side  with  them,  and  what  you  mean  by  an 


144  CONCLUSION. 

idealist."  Such  a  reply  would  be  only  reason- 
able, and  I  will  try  to  answer  the  demand  it 
makes,  or  at  any  rate  to  give  you  a  few  hints 
which  will  enable  you  to  work  out  the  question 
for  yourselves. 

There  is  not  one  amongst  you  all,  I  care  not 
how  young  he  may  be,  who  has  not  heard  or  felt 
the  call  in  his  own  heart  to  put  aside  all  evil 
habits,  and  to  live  a  brave,  simple,  truthful  life  in 
this  school.  It  may  have  come  to  you  while  lis- 
tening in  chapel  or  elsewhere  to  religious  teach- 
ing, or  in  the  play  fields  or  dormitories ;  when 
you  have  been  alone  or  in  company,  at  work  or 
at  play,  but  that  it  has  come,  at  some  time,  in 
some  place,  there  is  not  a  boy  in  this  chapel  who 
will  deny.  It  is  no  modern,  no  Christian  experi- 
ence, this.  The  choice  of  Hercules,  and  number- 
less other  Pagan  stories,  the  witness  of  nearly  all 
histories  and  all  literatures,  attest  that  it  is  an 
experience  common  to  all  our  race.  It  is  of  it 
that  the  poet  is  thinking  in  those  fine  lines  of 
Emerson  which  are  written  up  in  the  Hall  of 
Marlborough  College:  — 

•'  So  close  is  glory  to  our  dust, 
So  near  is  God  to  man  — 


'      CONCLUSION.  145 

When  duty  whispers  low,  'thou  must,' 
The  youth  replies,  '  I  can.'  " 

It  does  not  wait  for  the  reasoning  powers  to  be 
developed,  but  comes  right  in  upon  the  boy  him- 
self, appealing  to  him  to  listen  and  follow. 

It  is  this  whisper,  this  call,  which  is  the  ground 
of  what  I  have,  for  want  of  a  better  name,  been 
speaking  of  as  idealism.  Just  in  so  far  as  the 
boy  listens  to  and  welcomes  it  he  is  becoming  an 
idealist  —  one  who  is  rising  out  of  himself,  and 
into  direct  contact  and  communion  with  spiritual 
influences,  which  even  when  he  shrinks  from 
them,  and  tries  to  put  them  aside,  he  feels  and 
knows  to  be  as  real,  and  will  live,  I  hope,  to  ac- 
knowledge to  be  more  real  than  all  influences 
coming  to  him  from  the  outside  world  —  one 
who  is  bent  on  bringing  himself  and  the  world 
into  obedience  to  these  spiritual  influences.  If 
he  turns  to  meet  the  call  and  answers  ever  so 
feebly  and  hesitatingly,  it  becomes  clearer  and 
stronger.  He  will  feel  next,  that  just  in  so  far 
as  he  is  loyal  to  it  he  is  becoming  loyal  to  his 
brethren :  that  he  must  not  only  build  his  own 
life  up  in  conformity  with  its  teaching,  must  not 
only  find  or  cut  his  own  way  straight  to  what  is 
10 


146  CONCLUSION. 

fair  and  true  and  noble,  but  must  help  on  those 
who  are  around  him  and  will  come  after  him,  and 
make  the  path  easier  and  plainer  for  them  also. 

I  have  indicated  in  outline,  in  a  few  sentences, 
a  process  which  takes  a  life-time  to  work  out. 
You  all  know  too,  alas !  even  those  who  have  al- 
ready listened  most  earnestly  to  the  voice,  and 
followed  most  faithfully,  how  many  influences 
there  are  about  you  and  within  you  which  stand 
across  the  first  steps  in  the  path,  and  bar  your 
progress  ;  which  are  forever  dwarfing  and  dis- 
torting the  ideal  you  are  painfully  struggling 
after,  and  appealing  to  the  cowardice  and  lazi- 
ness and  impurity  which  are  in  every  one  of  us, 
to  thwart  obedience  to  the  call.  But  here,  as 
elsewhere,  it  is  the  first  step  which  costs,  and 
tells.  He  who  has  once  taken  that,  consciously 
and  resolutely,  has  gained  a  vantage  ground  for 
all  his  life.  That  first  step,  remember,  ought  to 
be  taken  by  English  boys  at  our  English  schools. 

And  here  let  me  turn  aside  for  a  moment  to 
note  for  you  what  seems  to  me,  looking  from  out- 
side, the  ideal  for  which  you  English  boys  should 
Just  now  be  specially  striving.  The  strength 
and  weakness  of  the  nation  of  which  you  are  a 


CONCLUSION.  147 

part  will  always  be  reflected  powerfully  in  these 
miniature   Englands,   and   there   is   a    national 
weakness  which  is  alarming  all  thoughtful  Eng- 
lishmen at  this  time.     Our  race  on  both  sides  of 
the  Atlantic  has,  for  generations,  got  and  spent 
money    faster  than  any  other,    and  this    spend- 
thrift habit  has  had  a  baleful  effect  on  English 
life.     It  has  made  it  more  and  more  feverish  and 
unsatisfying.     The  standard  of  expenditure  has 
been  increasing   by  leaps   and    bounds,  and  de- 
moralizing  trade,   society,   every   industry,   and 
every  profession  until  a  false  ideal   has  estab- 
lished itself,  and  the  aim  of  life  is  too  commonly 
to  get,  not  to  be,  while  men  are  valued  more  and 
more  for  what  they  have,  not  for  what  they  are. 
The  reaction  has,  I  trust,  set  in.     A  period  of 
depression,  such  as  not  been  known  for  half  a 
century,  has  come,  happily  in  time  to  show  us 
how  unreal  and  transitory  is  all  such  material 
prosperity,  that  a  nation's  life  cannot  stand  any 
more  than  a  man's  in  the  things  which  it  possesses. 
But  the  reign  of  Mammon  will  be  hard  to  put 
down,  and  all  wholesome  iufluences  which  can 
be  brought  to  bear  upon  that  evil  stronghold  will 
be  sorely  needed. 


148  CONCLUSION. 

Amongst  these  none  should  be  more  potent 
than  that  of  our  great  schools.  It  is  probably 
too  late  for  the  present  generation  of  grown  men 
to  restore  a  sounder  tone  and  set  up  a  higher 
ideal.  Those  by  whom  it  must  be  done,  if  it  be 
done  at  all,  are  now  growing  up  in  such  schools 
as  this.  There  can  be,  1  fear,  no  question  that 
the  outside  world  has  been  reflected  in  our 
schools.  I  hear  on  all  sides  stories  of  increased 
expenditure  of  all  kinds.  There  must  be  fancy 
dresses  for  all  games,  and  boys  are  made  to  feel 
uncomfortable  who  do  not  conform  to  the  fashion, 
or  who  practice  such  useful  and  often  necessary 
economies  as  wearing  old  clothes  or  traveling 
third-class.  You  know  whether  such  things  are 
true  here.  If  they  are,  they  are  sapping  true 
manliness,  and  tainting  our  national  life  at  its 
roots.  But  the  stain,  I  believe,  has  not  sunk  so 
deep,  and  the  reaction  may  be  swifter  and  deeper 
than  elsewhere  in  societies  bound  together  in  so 
close  an  intimacy  as  must  exist  in  such  schools  as 
this. 

In  no  other  portions  of  English  society  can 
public  opinion  be  modified  so  swiftly  and  so  rad 
•cally  as  in  a  public  school.     One  generation  of 


CONCLUSION.  149 

brave  boys  may  do  it,  and  a  school  generation  is 
only  a  short  four  or  five  years.  I  say,  then,  de- 
liberately, that  no  man  can  gauge  the  value  in 
English  life  at  this  present  critical  time  of  a 
steady  stream  of  young  men,  flowing  into  all  pro- 
fessions and  all  industries  from  our  public  schools, 
who  have  learnt  resolutely  to  use  those  words  so 
hard  to  speak  in  a  society  such  as  ours,  "  I  can't 
ifford ; "  who  have  been  trained  to  have  few 
wants  and  to  serve  these  themselves,  so  that  they 
may  have  always  something  to  spare  of  power 
and  of  means  to  help  others  ;  who  are  "  careless 
of  the  comfits  and  cushions  of  life,"  and  content 
to  leave  them  to  the  valets  of  all  ranks.  Many 
)f  us  have  hopes  from  all  we  hear  and  know  of 
this  and  other  such  schools  that  such  a  stream  of 
free  and  helpful  young  men  may  be  looked  for. 
Will  you,  boys,  and,  above  all,  you  elder  boys, 
who  can  give  a  tone  to  the  standards  and  ideals 
if  to-day  here,  which  may  last  for  many  years, 
see  that,  so  far  at  any  rate  as  Clifton  is  con- 
cerned, such  hopes  shall  not  be  disappointed? 

And  take  my  word  for  it,  while  you  will  be 
doing  a  great  work  for  your  country,  and  restor- 
ng  an  ideal  which  has  all  but  faded  out,  you  will 


150  CONCLUSION. 

be  taking  the  surest  road  to  all  such  success  as 
becomes  honest  men  to  achieve,  in  whatever  walk 
of  life  you  may  choose  for  yourselves.  The  out- 
look is  by  no  means  cheerful  even  for  those  who 
have  learnt  to  live  simply,  and  to  estimate  "  com- 
fits and  cushions "  at  their  true  value,  either  in 
England  or  elsewhere.  The  following  of  false 
ideals  has,  I  fear,  thrown  heavy  odds  for  many 
years  to  come  against  the  chances  in  our  modern 
life  of  those  who  will  not  bow  down  to  them. 

It  is  more  than  thirty  years  since  the  wisest  of 
American  writers,  and  one  of  the  best  of  Amer- 
ican gentlemen,  speaking  to  the  young  men  of 
New  England,  made  much  the  same  sad  confes- 
sion as  I  am  making  to  you  to-day.  "  The  young 
man,"  he  says,  "on  entering  life  finds  the  way  to 
lucrative  employment  blocked  by  abuses.  The 
ways  of  trade  are  grown  selfish  to  the  borders 
of  theft,  and  supple  to  the  borders  (if  not  beyond 
the  borders)  of  fraud.  The  employments  of  com- 
merce are  not  intrinsically  unfit  for  a  man,  or 
less  genial  to  his  faculties  ;  but  these  are  now  in 
their  general  course  so  vitiated  by  derelictions 
>nd  abuses,  at  which  all  connive,  that  it  requires 
more  vigor  and  resources  than  can  be  expected 


CONCLUSION.  151 

of  every  young  man  to  right  himself  in  them. 
Has  he  genius  and  virtue  ?  the  less  does  he  find 
them  fit  for  him  to  grow  in,  and  if  he  would 
thrive  in  them  he  must  sacrifice  all  the  brilliant 
dreams  of  boyhood  and  youth  ;  he  must  forget 
the  prayers  of  his  childhood,  and  must  take  on 
him  the  harness  of  routine  and  obsequiousness. 
...  I  do  not  charge  the  merchant  or  mauufac- 
turer.  The  sins  of  our  trade  belong  to  no  class, 
to  no  individual.  One  plucks,  one  distributes, 
one  eats.  Everybody  partakes,  everybody  con- 
fesses —  with  cap  and  knee  volunteers  his  con- 
fession, yet  none  feels  himself  accountable.  He 
did  not  create  the  abuse,  he  cannot  alter  it.  .  .  . 
It  happens,  therefore,  that  all  such  ingenuous 
souls  as  feel  in  themselves  the  irrepressible  striv- 
ings of  a  noble  aim,  who  by  the  law  of  their 
nature  must  act  simply,  find  these  ways  of  trade 
unfit  for  them,  and  they  come  forth  from  it. 
Such  cases  are  becoming  more  common  every 
day.  But  by  coming  out  of  trade  you  have  not 
cleared  yourselves  —  the  trail  of  the  serpent 
reaches  into  all  the  lucrative  professions  and 
practices  of  men.  Each  has  its  own  wrongs. 
Each  finds  a  very  intelligent  conscience  a   disi 


152  CONCLUSION. 

qualification  for  success."  And  so  further  on  he 
adds  —  "  Considerations  of  this  kind  have  turned 
the  attention  of  many  philanthropists  and  intelli- 
gent persons  to  the  claims  of  manual  labor  aa 
part  of  the  education  of  every  young  man.  If 
the  accumulated  wealth  of  the  past  generation  is 
thus  tainted  —  no  matter  how  much  of  it  is 
offered  to  us  —  we  must  begin  to  consider  if  it 
were  not  the  nobler  part  to  renounce  it,  and  to 
put  ourselves  into  primary  relations  with  the  soil 
and  nature,  and,  abstaining  from  whatever  is  dis- 
honest and  unclean,  to  take  each  of  us  bravely 
his  part  with  his  own  hands  in  the  manual  labor 
of  the  world." 

It  is  a  sad  confession  that  our  modern  society 
has  come  to  such  a  pass,  but  one  which  I  fear 
holds  as  true  for  England  as  for  America.  That 
it  will  continue  so  no  one  who  has  faith  in  a 
righteous  government  of  the  world  can  believe. 
There  seem  to  me  signs  on  all  sides  that  it  is 
coming  to  an  end,  and  that  a  new  industrial  world 
is  already  forming  under  the  wreck  of  the  old. 
But  the  time  of  change  must  be  one  of  sore  trials 
and  your  generation  will  have  to  bear  the  strain 
»f  it.     In  such  a  time  as  this  they  only  wiU  be 


CONCLUSION.  153 

able  to  help  their  country  in  her  need  who  have 
learned  in  early  life  the  great  lessons  of  sim- 
plicity and  self-denial,  and  I  don't  hesitate  to  say 
that  the  worst  education  which  teaches  simplic- 
ity and  self-denial  is  better  than  the  best  which 
teaches  all  else  but  this. 

The  first  aim  then  for  your  time  and  your 
generation  should  be,  to  foster,  each  in  your- 
selves, and  each  in  your  school,  a  simple  and  self- 
denying  life  —  your  ideal,  to  be  a  true  and  useful 
one,  must  have  these  two  characteristics  before 
all  others.  Of  course  purity,  courage,  truthful- 
ness are  as  absolutely  necessary  as  ever,  without 
them  there  can  be  no  ideal  at  all.  But  as  each 
age  and  each  country  has  its  own  special  needs 
and  weaknesses,  so  the  best  mind  of  its  youth 
should  be  bent  on  serving  where  the  need  is 
sorest,  and  bringing  strength  to  the  weak  places. 
There  will  be  always  crowds  ready  to  fall  in  with 
the  dapper,  pliant  ways  which  lead  most  readily 
to  success  in  every  community.  Society  has  been 
said  to  be  "  always  and  everywhere  in  conspir- 
acy against  the  true  manhood  of  every  one  of  its 
members ; "  and  the  saying,  though  bitter,  con- 
tains a  sad  truth.     So  the  faithful  idealist  will 


154  CONCLUSION. 

have  to  learn,  without  arrogance  and  with  per- 
fect good  temper,  to  treat  society  as  a  child,  and 
never  to  allow  it  to  dictate.  So  treated,  society 
will  surely  come  round  to  those  who  have  a  high 
ideal  before  them,  and  therefore  firm  ground  un- 
der their  feet. 

"  Coy  Hebe  flies  from  those  that  woo 

And  shuns  the  hand  would  seize  upon  her; 
Live  thou  thy  life,  and  she  will  sue, 
To  pour  for  thee  the  cup  of  honor." 

Let  me  say  a  word  or  two  more  on  this  busi- 
ness of  success.  Is  it  not,  after  all,  the  test  of 
true  and  faithful  work?  Must  it  not  be  the 
touchstone  of  the  humble  and  magnanimous,  as 
well  as  of  the  self-asserting  and  ambitious  ?  Un- 
doubtedly ;  but  here  again  we  have  to  note  that 
what  passes  with  society  for  success,  and  is  so 
labeled  by  public  opinion,  may  well  be,  as  often 
as  not  actually  is,  a  bad  kind  of  failure. 

Public  opinion  in  our  day  has,  for  instance, 
been  jubilant  over  the  success  of  those  who  have 
started  in  life  penniless  and  have  made  large 
fortunes.  Indeed,  this  particular  class  of  self- 
made  men  is  the  one  which  we  have  been  of  late 
Invited    to  honor.      Before   doing  so,  however. 


CONCLUSION.  150 

we  shall  have  to  ask  with  some  care,  and  bear- 
ing in  mind  Emerson's  warnings,  by  what  meth- 
ods the  fortune  has  been  made.  The  rapid  ac- 
cumulation of  national  wealth  in  England  can 
scarcely  be  called  a  success  by  any  one  who 
studies  the  methods  by  which  it  has  been  made, 
and  its  effects  on  the  national  character.  It 
may  be  otherwise  with  this  or  that  millionaire, 
but  each  case  must  be  judged  on  its  own  merits. 

I  remember  hearing,  years  ago,  of  an  old  mer- 
chant who,  on  his  death-bed,  divided  the  results 
of  long  years  of  labor,  some  few  hundreds  in 
all,  amongst  his  sons.  "  It  is  little  enough,  my 
boys,"  were  almost  his  last  words,  "  but  there 
is  n't  a  dirty  shilling  in  the  whole  of  it."  He  had 
been  a  successful  man  too,  though  not  in  the 
"  self-made"  sense.  For  his  ideal  had  been,  not 
to  make  money,  but  to  keep  clean  hands.  And 
he  had  been  faithful  to  it. 

In  reading  the  stories  of  these  last  persons 
whom  the  English  nation  is  invited  to  honor,  I 
am  generally  struck  with  the  predominance  of 
th€  personal  element.  The  key-note  seems  gen- 
erally some  resolve  taken  in  early  youth  con- 
nected  with   their   own  temporal  advancement 


156  CONCLUSION. 

This  one  will  be  Lord  Mayor ;  this  other  Prime 
Minister  ;  a  third  determines  to  own  a  fine  estate 
near  the  place  of  his  birth,  a  fourth  to  become 
head  of  the  business  in  which  he  started  as  an 
errand-boy.  They  did  indeed  achieve  their  ends, 
were  faithful  to  the  idea  they  had  set  before 
themselves  as  boys  ;  but  I  doubt  if  we  can  put 
them  anywhere  but  in  the  lower  school  of  ideal- 
ists. For  the  predominant  motive  being  self- 
assertion,  their  idealism  seems  never  to  have 
got  past  the  personal  stage,  which  at  best  is  but 
a  poor  business  as  compared  with  thft  *^rue  thing. 
Try  the  case  by  a  teste  very  one  of  you  can  ap- 
ply directly  and  easily.  One  boy  here,  resolves 
—  I  will  win  this  scholarship ;  I  will  bt  bead  of 
the  school ;  I  will  be  captain  of  the  elever« ;  and 
does  it.  Another  resolves  —  this  school  shs^\  be 
purer  in  tone,  simpler  in  habits,  braver  and 
stronger  in  temper,  for  my  presence  here ;  doe» 
his  best,  but  doubts  after  all  whether  he  has  suo 
ceeded.  I  need  not  say  that  the  latter  is  the  bes^ 
idealist ;  but  which  is  the  most  successfid  Clifton 
boy? 

I  must  bring  these  remarks  to  an  end,  and  yet 
have   only  been   able   to   touch,  and  that  very 


CONCLUSION.  157 

lightly,  the  fringe  of  a  great  subject.  I  am  sure 
many  of  you  have  felt  this ;  and  I  shall  be  sur- 
prised if  some  amongst  you  are  not  already  lis- 
tening to  me  with  a  shade  of  jealousy  in  your 
minds,  which  might  formulate  itself  somehow, 
perhaps  thus  :  "  Is  this  talk  about  idealism  quite 
straightforward  ?  Have  n't  we  heard  all  this 
before  ?  —  Self-denial,  simplicity  of  life,  courage, 
and  the  rest,  are  they  not  the  first  fruits  of  Chris- 
tianity as  we  have  been  taught  it?  And  we 
have  been  told,  too,  that  this  call  of  which  you 
have  been  talking  is  the  voice  of  Christ's  spirit 
speaking  to  ours.  Can  any  good  come  of  swad- 
dling these  truths  in  other  clothes  which  will 
scarcely  fit  them  better,  or  make  them  more  easy, 
or  more  acceptable  ?  " 

To  which  I  am  glad  to  reply  from  my  hfeart 
—  Truly  ;  so  it  is.  Rem  acu  tetigesti.  Christ  is, 
indeed,  the  great  idealist.  "  Be  ye  perfect  as 
your  Father  in  heaven  is  perfect,"  is  the  ideal 
He  sets  before  us  —  the  only  one  which  is  per- 
manent and  all-sufficing.  His  own  spirit  com- 
muning with  ours  is  that  call  which  comes  to 
every  human  being.  But  my  object  has  been  to 
get  you  to-night  to  look  at  the  facts  of  your  own 


158  CONCLUSION. 

experience  —  and,  as  I  have  said  already,  the 
youngest  has  some  experience  in  these  deep  mat- 
ters —  without  connecting  them  for  the  moment 
with  any  form  of  religion. 

Supposing  the  whole  Bible,  every  trace  oi 
Christendom,  to  disappear  to-morrow,  the  same 
thing  would,  nevertheless,  be  occurring  to  you, 
and  me,  and  every  man.  "We  should  each  of  us 
still  be  conscious  of  a  presence,  which  we  are 
quite  sure  is  not  ourself,  in  the  deepest  recesses  of 
our  own  heart,  communing  with  us  there  and 
calling  us  to  take  up  our  twofold  birthright  as 
man  —  the  mastery  over  visible  things,  and  above 
all  the  mastery  over  our  own  bodies,  actions, 
thoughts  —  and  the  power,  always  growing,  of 
this  mysterous  communion  with  the  invisible. 

It  is,  therefore,  that  I  have  abstained  from  the 
use  of  religious  phraseology,  believing  that,  apart 
altogether  from  the  Christian  revelation,  the  ideal- 
ist will,  and  must  always  remain,  nearest  to  the 
invisible  world,  and  therefore  most  powerful  in 
this  visible  one. 

I  think  this  method  is  worth  using  now  and 
then,  because,  no  doubt,  the  popular  verdict  of  this 
time  is  against  idealism.    If  you  have  not  already 


CONCLUSION.  159 

felt  it,  you  will  assuredly  feel,  as  soon  as  you 
leave  these  walls,  that  your  lot  is  cast  in  a  world 
which  longs  for  nothing  so  much  as  to  succeed 
in  shaking  off  all  belief  in  anything  which  cannot 
be  tested  by  the  senses,  and  gauged  and  measured 
by  the  intellect,  as  the  trappings  of  a  worn-out 
superstition.  Men  have  been  trying,  so  runs  the 
new  gospel,  to  live  by  faith,  and  not  by  sight, 
ever  since  there  is  any  record  at  all  of  their  lives ; 
and  so  they  have  had  to  manufacture  for  them- 
selves the  faiths  they  were  to  live  by.  What  is 
called  the  life  of  the  soul  or  spirit,  and  the  life  of 
the  understanding,  have  been  in  conflict  all  this 
time,  and  the  one  has  always  been  gaining  on 
the  other.  Stronghold  after  stronghold  has  fal]<3n 
till  it  is  clear  almost  to  demonstration  that  there 
will  soon  be  no  place  left  for  that  which  was  once 
deemed  all-powerful.  The  spiritual  life  can  no 
longer  be  led  honestly.  Man  has  no  knowledge 
of  the  invisible  upon  which  he  can  build.  Let 
him  own  the  truth  and  turn  to  that  upon  which 
he  can  build  safely  —  the  world  of  matter,  his 
knowledge  of  which  is  always  growing ;  and  be 
content  with  the  things  he  can  see  and  taste  and 
handle.     Those  who  are  telling  you  still  in  this 


160  CONCLUSION. 

time  that  your  life  can  and  ought  to  be  lived  in 
daily  communion  with  the  unseen  —  that  so  only 
you  can  loyally  control  the  visible  —  are  either 
willfully  deceiving  you,  or  are  dreamers  and  vis- 
ionaries. 

So  the  high  priests  of  the  new  gospel  teach, 
and  their  teaching  echoes  through  our  literature, 
and  colors  the  life  of  the  streets  and  markets  in  a 
thousand  ways;  aod  a  Mammon-ridden  genera- 
tion, longing  to  be  rid  of  what  they  hope  are  only 
certain  old  and  clumsy  superstitions,  —  which 
they  try  to  believe  injurious  to  others,  and  are 
quite  sure  make  them  uneasy  in  their  own  efforts 
to  eat,  drink,  and  be  merry,  —  applauds  as  openly 
as  it  dare,  and  hopes  soon  to  see  the  millennium 
of  the  flesh-pots  publicly  declared  and  recognized. 

Against  which,  wherever  you  may  encounter 
them,  that  you  young  Englishmen  may  be  ready 
and  able  to  stand  fast,  is  the  hope  and  prayer  of 
many  anxious  hearts ;  in  a  time,  charged  on 
every  side  with  signs  of  the  passing  away  of  old 
things,  such  as  have  not  been  seen  above  the 
horizon  in  Christendom  since  Luther  nailed  his 
protest  on  the  church  door  of  a  German  village. 


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